So you’ve heard of a non-diet approach, but you’re probably wondering if it could actually work for me. After years of yo-yo dieting, I wondered the same, and I’m happy to report after 6 years of following a non-diet approach that yes this can work.
And not only does it work, it completely transforms your relationship with food so you never have to worry about eating healthy again.
Can you really not diet and not just eat everything?
It’s very common to wonder if you can actually learn to eat without food rules after years of trying to follow just about every diet plan out there.
When I first heard about intuitive eating and started considering taking a non diet approach to eating, I figured there was no way it would work for me. I looked back at all the times I was off a diet and just felt out of control around food.
At the time I couldn’t see that it wasn’t until I started dieting that I started to feel out of control around food. I couldn’t see how it wasn’t because I didn’t have willpower. The real reason I felt out of control and ate too much came from the dieting approach to eating.
When I told myself not to eat certain foods because they were bad. I just started to focus more on how good they tasted. I thought they tasted better because I created scarcity around when I could have them and how much I could have.
Let me give you a specific example. I used to call myself a chocoholic – I thought I was addicted to chocolate – and needed to have a piece of chocolate a day. But could only have at most one square of chocolate a day (although I’d break that rule often enough).
Then I started to heal my relationship with food. I let myself have chocolate without all the drama of thinking I had to limit myself because I was addicted and the craziest thing started to happen.
When I stopped putting limits on how much I could eat, I stopped craving it so often. I stopped feeling like I had to eat it while I could. I was able to listen to my body, and oddly enough ate less chocolate when it wasn’t restricted than when I was trying to limit it to diet (but that wasn’t my goal).
How a non-diet approach works
A non-diet approach is a self-care framework that emphasizes building trust in yourself and your body’s hunger-fullness cues. There are no rules about what you can eat or when you have to exercise, which can feel so overwhelming after years of trying to follow diet plans.
I originally started to learn this framework with the principles of intuitive eating, but overtime morphed my approach into something that worked for me. And your non-diet approach could look different than mine because it’s about finding what works best for you to feel the best you can in that moment.
But there are some common pieces that build a successful non-diet approach:
- Learning to give yourself permission to eat any food at any time: this builds self-trust around food plus reduces the urgency to eat foods that were limited.
- Challenging beliefs about food: you can’t change your relationship with food without looking at the beliefs that create how you think and feel about food.
- Leaning into joyful movement that feels good in your body: Learn to release the thoughts that create resistance around exercising to find movement that feels fun and good for your body.
- Improving your relationship with your body: This is both how you feel about your body’s ability and appearance. Feeling good in your body comes from your relationship with your body, so we want to take a look at the beliefs creating your body image.
If you’re still hesitant thinking you’ll just lose control around food without rules about what you can and can’t eat. I want to offer you one of my favorite thoughts from my own journey ~ you don’t need self-control when you have self-trust.
Tips for adopting a non-diet approach to eating
Here are some of my top tips for getting started with a non-diet approach to eating:
- Journal and write down your thoughts about food when you feel triggered or stressed about eating. Later you can use these beliefs to question if you want to continue having that thought about food
- Practice giving yourself permission with one food at a time. In the beginning, I felt overwhelmed by the lack of rules about what to eat. Going slow can make it feel more manageable to break food rules.
- Focus on how habits – eating, exercise, or any other habit – make you feel physically and mentally. This awareness becomes your guide to deciding what you want to eat or how you want to move your body.
- Start practicing kindness to your body – it can be so easy to jump to judging yourself, but try to bring in some compassion for where your body is right now.
- Practice gratitude – everyday list 1-3 things you’re grateful for related to eating, exercise, or your body