Why Dieting Is Not the Answer

If you’re working to heal from disordered eating of any kind, please remember that dieting is not the answer.

Dieting only exacerbates disordered eating, so trying to manage it with a diet can inadvertently make things worse.

Today’s diets are sneaky, trying to position themselves as innocent “lifestyle changes” and “wellness protocols” and even sometimes as ways to heal your relationship with food.

But following a plan designed to keep you small and fearful is no way to find true freedom—with food or with anything else in life.

Of course when you’re in the early stages of disordered-eating recovery you may need some guidance from an eating-disorder treatment team to help ensure that you eat enough food, and a wide enough variety of foods, to support your healing and make sure you’re not slipping back into restriction.

That can be tricky and nuanced, and the eating disorder can try to turn anything into a diet—even recovery guidelines or intuitive eating.

It takes vigilance and critical thinking not to fall back into the diet mentality or get suckered by diets disguised as health. I know because I’ve been there myself—and so have millions of other people, especially folks in larger bodies and with more-marginalized identities.

I don’t have all the answers, and in my experience recovery takes some combination of tenacity, privilege, timing, and serendipity that can’t truly be pinned down. But I do know this:

You deserve peace and freedom in your relationship with food, and in your life.

You deserve compassion, respect, and care, just by virtue of being human.

You deserve so much more than what diet culture has to offer.

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This week on Food Psych, fellow author Kelsey Miller returns to share her experiences of being pregnant in a larger body and with PCOS, adjusting to postpartum body changes, being a new mom, navigating the wedding industry as a plus-size bride, and so much more.

Plus, I answer a listener question about eating-disorder recovery while living at home with a parent who pushes diet culture on you.

Check out the episode here, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode.

Here’s to true peace with food,

Christy