Intention is Everything: Reclaiming Healthy Behaviors from the Grips of Diet Culture

As you begin to explore the anti-diet or Intuitive Eating arena, a specific kind of confusion often sets in. You might find yourself wondering things like:

"If I’m anti-diet, does that mean I’m never allowed to eat a salad or go for a run again? Am I a 'bad' anti-dieter if I actually enjoy vegetables?"

It’s a valid question. Because diet culture has hijacked health behaviors for so long, we have been conditioned to believe that kale and cardio are merely tools for body manipulation. Why would we ever hold a plank if not to shrink our waistlines?

Navigating the Emotional Barriers to Anti-Diet Eating

If you are anything like me when I first embraced intuitive eating and started rejecting diet culture, you understand in a logical, big-brain way why diets don’t work and in theory why an anti-diet approach makes sense. Yet still, there is resistance.

I have found in this work, knowing the facts isn’t enough. We also need to process some intense emotional hurdles because diet culture gave us a powerful, albeit faulty, psychological safety net.

Ditching Diet Culture: Anti-Diet Eating Takes Effort (and That's Okay)

When people first hear about rejecting diet culture, the idea of intuitive eating or adopting a non-diet/anti-diet approach, the reaction is rarely, “Cool, tell me more, this is the answer I have been looking for.”

More often, the idea sets off flashing red warning lights and a loud “Danger, Danger!” siren, followed by a list of objections that might sound suspiciously like your own internal monologue.

Approaching food and your body through this lens requires deep work to unlearn and untangle messages so ingrained you might not even realize they are there.

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