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For the longest time, I thought that dieting was about the food you were or weren't putting in your mouth, and that’s it.
I’d be following the Atkins Diet and not eating carbs. Later, I was on Weight Watchers and assigning points to all of my food.
I even went on the Master Cleanse, didn’t eat food, and only drank lemon water.
Those are the obvious forms of dieting.
Then, in an effort to feel less controlled by food, I decided to “give up dieting,” meaning I was no longer following a prescribed, traditional diet or eating plan.
But I was still agonizing over the amount of carbs or calories in a meal.
I would still kinda add up the point values in my head and score my totals at the end of the day.
After eating certain foods or “eating too much” I would still feel immense amounts of guilt and shame.
I would still avoid social events for fear of not being able to “control” myself around food.
All this was still happening even though I was “not on a diet.”
Not surprisingly, women tell me all the time that they, too, “are not on a diet” but they can’t seem to stop thinking about what to eat, when to eat, or whether they should eat at all.
They are still planning meals, earning their meals, or making up for their meals.
The thing is, “dieting” is not about the types of foods you eat or not but rather has everything to do with how you feel and think about the foods you eat or not.
Said another way, your mental and emotional response to eating is the same even though you aren’t doing “Whole 30, Atkins, or Weight Watchers.”
If eating brings up an ethical or moral dilemma, meaning you are “good” or “bad” for eating a certain way, you are on a diet.
If you are trying to avoid eating a certain way and then judge yourself when you "slip up" and eat that way, you are on a diet.
When I am working with a client on healing their relationship with food I do not tell them what to eat or not eat (or provide meal plans or shopping lists, etc.) because their disordered relationship with food has less to do with the types or amounts of food they are eating and has everything to do with how they think and feel about themselves for eating.
Mindset medicine is the only prescription to heal this wound because dieting truly is a state of mind.
It's less action, more thought process.
xo Cara
Diet Recovery Resources
To learn more about the non-diet approach to healing your relationship with food, check out my free video training series HERE.
You can also check out my podcast, Love Your Bod Pod, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Lastly, you can also check out my books, or online course.