IE Principle #1: REJECT DIET MENTALITY!!!
Raise Your Hand If You're Tired of Dieting 🙋🏻♀️
If you've ever felt exhausted by the cycle of dieting—constantly restricting, feeling guilty, and ultimately "failing"—you are not alone. It's time to break free from this relentless, damaging cycle and embrace a more compassionate, realistic approach to your health and well-being.
The #1 principle of intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality. Forget everything you’ve been conditioned to believe about what it takes to be healthy. Let’s challenge those outdated ideas and rebuild a relationship with food and your body that’s based on trust and respect. Here’s how:
Step 1: Reflect on Your Diet History
Take a moment to think about all the times you felt like a failure because you couldn’t stick to a diet or because you regained the weight you worked so hard to lose. This isn’t just frustrating—it’s emotionally exhausting, and it can take a toll on your mental health. How many times have you tried a new diet, only to blame yourself when it didn’t “work”?
Step 2: Get Angry 😡
Yes, get angry! Diet culture is a $72 billion industry that thrives on teaching you to distrust your own body and buy into the belief that you need to change in order to be happy, worthy, or healthy. It profits from your insecurities, convincing you that happiness is just one more restrictive diet away. But here's the truth: most diets are unsustainable because they rely on restricting what and how much you eat.
Here’s how the typical diet goes: You start off with excitement and motivation. Maybe you cut out certain foods, or drastically reduce your calorie intake. At first, it feels like it’s working, but as time goes on, the cravings start. You think about the foods you’ve labeled “off-limits” until one day, you give in—and you feel like you’ve failed. But the reality is, it wasn’t you who failed the diet. The diet failed you.
Step 3: Ditch the Diet Tools
It’s time to take a bold step: get rid of the diet tools that reinforce the diet mentality. Throw out the scale that only serves to make you feel bad about yourself. Toss the diet books and magazines that promise quick fixes or claim to have found the magical solution to weight loss. These tools only keep you trapped in the mindset that dieting is the answer.
Letting go of these tools might feel uncomfortable at first because you’re completely shifting how you view health. But here’s something to think about: if dieting really worked, you wouldn’t need to keep doing it. You wouldn’t be constantly searching for the next “miracle” diet.
Step 4: Understand Why Dieting Isn’t the Solution
Dieting sets you up for failure from the start because it encourages you to ignore your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues. It teaches you that external rules—like calorie limits or “good” vs. “bad” foods—are more trustworthy than your own body’s signals. But the truth is, your body knows what it needs. When you listen to it, you can develop a more balanced and peaceful relationship with food.
What most diets don’t tell you is that restricting certain foods often makes you crave them even more. It’s a vicious cycle: you restrict, then overeat, then feel guilty, then restrict again. This cycle isn’t sustainable, and it’s certainly not healthy.
Step 5: Commit to Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating is about reconnecting with your body’s natural cues and letting go of the diet rules that have dictated your eating habits for so long. It’s about trusting yourself and your body to know what you need, when you need it, and in what amount.
To truly heal your relationship with food and your body, you have to let go of the hope that the next diet will be “the one that works.” As long as you keep searching for that magic solution, you won’t be able to fully embrace intuitive eating. You’ll always be half in, half out—one foot still in the diet world, hoping for a miracle.
But what if the miracle is simply learning to trust yourself again?
Step 6: Embrace a New Definition of Health
Rejecting the diet mentality doesn’t mean you’re giving up on health. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Health isn’t about constantly striving for perfection or fitting into a certain size—it’s about balance, well-being, and taking care of both your physical and mental health. When you embrace intuitive eating, you’re choosing to nourish your body based on its needs, rather than punishing it for not fitting into diet culture’s unrealistic standards.
Are You Ready to Reject the Diet Mentality?
Breaking free from diet culture can be challenging, especially when it's been a part of your life for so long. But investing in yourself and committing to a healthier, more sustainable way of living is worth it. Intuitive eating isn’t a quick fix—it’s a lifelong journey of learning to trust your body and reclaim your relationship with food.
If you’re ready to let go of dieting for good and need support along the way, I’m here to help. Together, we can work on breaking down the barriers that have kept you stuck in the dieting cycle and build a healthier, more fulfilling relationship with food and your body.
Reach out today and let’s start your journey to intuitive eating!
