I bet you’ve been on a diet. Or two, or more…

What have you learned from the process? That you lose weight when on a diet? And gain weight when off a diet? I’m afraid to say, that’s pretty much all you’ll learn. And along the way, your “relationship” with food will become warped and twisted. You will not trust yourself around food. You will become pre-occupied with either restricting food, or deliberately over-eating. And you’ll blame yourself for all of this is.

My fault, not yours

I’ll start with an apology. To anyone who I imposed a calorie-counted, portion controlled diet on in my early career as an eager but naïve NHS dietitian. Predictably, the plans got followed for a while and a bit of weight was lost. But almost inevitably, my carefully crafted meal plans got abandoned. My fault. Not yours. Please accept my apology.

So diets don’t work

This is not just my personal experience. It is well known in weight science circles that the majority of people (95%) who lose weight by dieting will put all that weight back on, with many ending up heavier than before they started the diet. I rest my case. It is not in the dieting industry’s interest to let you know this. You can’t un-know it now. But you’re panicking. If you’re not on a diet, you’re off a diet. When you’re off a diet, you eat foods you “shouldn’t”, far too much of them. You feel liked you failed, again. You eventually feel so bad about yourself that you think you have no choice but to diet again. You are trapped in a cycle of DIETING, which leads to NOT DIETING, which leads to DIETING…you get the picture. Overall, you’re getting nowhere.

Enter NON-DIETING

Imagine a world where food is neither good or bad, right or wrong. Imagine that you are no more out of control around a plateful of biscuits than you are around a plateful of carrot sticks. Imagine that your favourite food gives you pleasure, not guilt. Imagine if you could taste food and decide if you actually like it instead of wondering whether it’s “allowed”. Imagine if you understood WHY you eat the way you do, and were able to improve HOW you eat. Imagine if you could learn to trust your body to guide you on hunger, fullness and satisfaction.

Stop imagining. Start making it happen. (Go back to previous page)