Dr. Leslie Van Romer helps people become healthier every day, but it took a desperate phone call from her youngest daughter, Nika Greenleaf, for the Sequim chiropractor to snap to attention.

Greenleaf was the only one of Van Romer’s three children to battle the scale throughout her life, so Van Romer stayed with her on the phone for more than an hour, creating a personalized eating plan for her daughter.

Three weeks later, Van Romer got another phone call from Greenleaf — this one less desperate and more victorious: the doctor’s daughter had lost 15 pounds.

Her daughter’s victory, in part, inspired Van Romer to write a book that encourages people to eat healthier and make weight loss manageable.

“I’ve been in the health care arena for 30 years, so it was just natural for me to take care of myself and eat well and exercise, so people started asking me how I do it,” she said.

With the encouragement of her assistant of more than 20 years, Katy Nichols, Van Romer plugged away for a year and a half and her first published book, “Getting Into Your Pants,” was released earlier this year.

According to Van Romer, who has lived in Sequim for more than 30 years, the main thing she learned in writing this book and in her previous work presenting health and motivational speeches for the community, was that both men and women were more concerned about weight loss for appearance than for health.

“I realized people weren’t motivated by looming diseases … what we are really concerned about is our weight. It’s a very tangible sort of thing,” she said, sitting in an examination room in her Sequim Avenue office. “(But) when you take care of something tangible like weight, it takes care of a lot of other health issues.”

Her discovery led to the title of her book.

“I was thinking about what women really care about,” she said. “And over the years I’ve constantly heard women say ‘I just want to get into my pants!’”

Van Romer’s main goal was to make her plan easy and manageable.

“I did what my patients recommended I do,” she said. “I made it simple and I made it fun. There is too much information (about weight loss) out there, too many complicated diets.”

Van Romer said in her book, she breaks down the process into three manageable steps: add, stop and wiggle. Instead of subtracting foods, like many diets do, Van Romer said her plan is to add the foods that are the best for you: fruits and vegetables.

“You add those foods and then you center your meals around them,” said the doctor, who said she herself eats 10 whole fruits by noon each day. “You’re not depriving or measuring or sneaking.”

The next step Van Romer recommends is to stop eating when your brain tells you that you are full.

“When you stop eating, it’s not your last meal,” she said. “Your disposal is replaceable, your stomach is not.”

Lastly, Van Romer said it is crucial to have some “wiggle room” in your eating.

“You build some flexibility in your plan,” she said. “Eight percent of the time, when it’s a normal day, you stick to eating healthy. When it’s a birthday or an anniversary or a holiday … you eat what you want.”

Van Romer also builds her trademarked “10+10 For Life” plan into her book — eating 10 whole fruits and 10 different vegetables a day will fill you up enough to only include small amounts of “bad for you” foods into your meals, she said.

In the end, Van Romer said she wrote the book to explain to people that while getting into those elusive pants might be the first reward to changing eating habits, a healthy future is a hefty benefit.

“It’s incredible when people start eating healthy what starts happening to them from the inside out,” she said.

“Getting Into Your Pants,” by Sequim chiropractor Dr. Leslie Van Romer, is available in several peninsula locations.

The book can be found at Pacific Mist Books, Sunny Farms Country Store and Nash’s Organic Produce in Sequim and Port Book and News, Odyssey Bookshop, Beauty & the Beach and Good to Go Natural Grocery in Port Angeles.

You also can get a copy by calling Van Romer’s office at 683-8844 or visiting www.GettingIntoYourPants.com.