intuitive eating principles, #1
1. reject the diet mentality
truly the IE principle of first importance, “reject the diet mentality” requires us to critically examine every message we have received about food and our bodies while living under diet culture (most of us have never lived anywhere else).
diet culture says: thinness means good health and fatness means poor health. weight loss is always good (and possible) and weight gain always bad. restricting our food intake is right and eating according to our bodies’ cues is wrong–bodies cannot be trusted, we must override our instinctive biological cues with Correct Dietary Knowledge and Practices.
every claim in the above paragraph is false. diet culture is a facet of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy; it’s a damaging, deceptive, lucrative method of social control. it doesn’t honor the natural spectrum of human bodies and experiences, and it diverts our energy from more constructive pursuits for individual and collective health.
so how will it look and feel for you to reject the diet mentality? it may reorient your entire life! it will mean learning to hear and respond to your body’s cues, and learning to accept and honor your body’s inherited weight set point. it’ll require you to trust your body as you learn to become an intuitive eater, and as you (possibly) gain weight. the body may temporarily overshoot its weight set point as it repairs damage from restriction. weight may creep upward for longer than you think you can stand. you may be very uncomfortable responding fully to your hunger. the more diet culture has informed your thinking and behavior, the tougher this process may be, mentally and physically. but it can lead you to peace and freedom that you never thought possible.
no more diets. diets have harmed your mental and physical health for too long. no “wellness diet” lifestyle change, no whole 30, no keto, no [current fad diet], no just another [x lbs] to lose. from now on, your body is the final authority on what it needs. it will probably take years for this practice to become instinctive again! (it was when you were a kid, before the diet mentality took hold.) be very patient with yourself, and mean as hell to the diet mentality.
“that food is bad”? NO. “that weight is wrong”? NO. “your body can’t be trusted”? GTFOH. saying no to the diet mentality is saying yes to life.
