IT ALL ENDS NOW!

Brigid Moss on how to say goodbye to toxic dieting trends

You can learn a new way to eat calmly and be happy around food, says Brigid Moss

Right now, the idea of starting a diet and/or exercise plan may seem like a no-brainer. Not only because we are at peak diet time, but because dieting is the dogma we’ve grown up with. Ever since Jane Fonda slipped on her leotard-and-leggings combo, we’ve been sold the desirability of shrinking our bodies so much that it feels simple and scientific. ‘In fact, we all live in diet culture,’ says registered nutritionist Laura Thomas PHD. ‘We get caught in this cycle of the idea we are flawed and that the solution to that is to diet. The system is rigged to make us think we’re not good enough.’ Even if we never formally diet, we overthink and worry about food. Maybe, like me, you’ve felt shady about polishing off the M&S Luxury Belgian Chocolate Assortment? Have you skipped a meal to feel thinner? Tried to run off calories? Felt you couldn’t go out for the night because of your weight? Or, perhaps you have a list of foods – maybe sugar, wheat, cake – that you avoid. What if our whole medical model of weight loss is wrong? And what if our diet culture beauty standards are trapping us into unhealthy eating behaviours? Enter the growing anti-diet movement. Leading this revolution in the UK, via social media, are Thomas, registered associate nutritionist Pixie Turner and registered dieticians Helen West and Rosie Saunt of The Rooted Project. They’re all educated and qualified to work in the NHS, as well as dedicated to nutrition myth-busting. ‘Research has shown diets do not work long term,’ says Turner. Think about it: the global diet industry – worth an estimated £136 billion – only exists because people like us keep going back to them. Because, the truth is, diets don’t work 80% of the time. ‘Diets usually end with weight rebound, and possibly binge eating, food obsession and/or exercise compulsion,’ says Thomas. When we restrict food, our bodies send us a huge message: ‘Eat!’ When West informs her patients that this is the case, ‘it typically comes as a huge relief. The idea that diets work if you just have the sticking power, means that women often beat themselves up about being a failure, when it’s the diet that’s failed them, not the other way around.’ So, if diets don’t work, what might? Enter Intuitive Eating (IE) – invented in the 1990s by US dieticians who saw their patients coming back with all the weight regained. The title makes it sound like the ‘eat what you want’ diet, but IE is an evidence-based programme.

IE doesn’t have the simple appeal of a diet, because you have to work on your thoughts, beliefs and behaviours, not just eat to a plan. Part of the IE process is about self-compassion (see page 156), a kind way of treating ourselves, plus there’s mindfulness in there, too, to help you learn to read your body. Like an eating plan, the goal is a healthy diet, but it isn’t the nutrition-focused definition. It includes, ‘having a variety and balance of different foods over time,’ says West, ‘But also having a healthy relationship with food – so you can eat without food taking up space in your brain or causing emotional distress.’ That’s why the what-to-put-in-your-mouth part comes at the very end; you need to do the mind stuff first.

‘One of the first questions people ask,’ says Turner, ‘is whether they’ll gain weight with IE. People are scared of letting go of weight loss as their primary goal.’ Evidence shows that, in time, your weight will settle within your body’s biological set point, ‘A small range at which you eat intuitively without restraint and move in a way that feels good for you,’ says Turner. ‘And just think what you have to gain in terms of freedom and flexibility, and not being obsessive about food, weight and exercise,’ says Thomas. So, is it time to make this the year we stop dieting, learn to be relaxed around food and maybe even start to like our body? That would be a happy new year indeed.

‘THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED TO MAKE US THINK WE ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH’