Are you stuck in a weight rut? Have you been trying to lose weight but find it so difficult, even painful, that you just feel like you’re moving two steps back for every step forward you take?

Join the club. No, really—join the Kick in the Tush Club!

Whether you are familiar with her bestselling book, Our Lady of Weight Loss: Miraculous and Motivational Musings from the Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal (an Oprah’s summer reading pick) or not, you should definitely check out Janice Taylor’s Kick in the Tush Club. Her weekly newsletter and website can help give you the encouragement and tips you need to succeed on your journey to a body you love.

Taylor, who has lost plenty of weight herself (50 pounds!), provides weight loss information in a fun and funny format, with plenty of her art, wit, and humor delivered with tips, recipes and advice. Since she has been able to keep the weight off for over five years, she knows something we don’t. Her secret? She says, as a weight loss “artist,” she learned to stop obsessing over food and instead to create art when she wanted to eat.

Amazing! It makes perfect sense though, right? When we overeat it’s usually an emotional experience—or through sheer boredom. Why not take that emotional charge—or counteract that boredom—with some creative, productive art-making?

Dubbed wacky, original and creative, Taylor’s book is centered around recipes, positive body image and exercise, as well as supportive language to comfort people who already know they need to eat less and move more to lose weight. She focuses on what all people who lose weight and happily keep it off know—that they must change on the inside to create change outside. As Julia Cameron says of her work, “The best makeovers begin from the inside out. Our Lady of Weight Loss makes the phrase ‘lighten up’ quite literal.”

Taylor’s website and newsletter—her “Tush Club”—are centered around these same principles. People who write in each week are rewarded with her warmth and friendliness—a congratulations for taking a tiny step, or even simply acknowledging an awareness that one must be taken. And isn’t that what everyone on a weight loss journey needs? While so many friends and family members approach weight loss with “good intentions” and offer what they think is “constructive criticism,” they don’t realize that their words usually make the problem worse. Janice is the anti-hurt; she will help encourage you to help you love yourself and get to where you want to really be.