If you’re ready for a change after years of yo-yo dieting, a non-diet approach could be what you’re looking for. Healing your relationship with food with a non-diet approach and intuitive eating is truly the best way to create a sustainable, healthy way to eat.
It creates less stress and worry about doing all the right things, and brings the focus to you. It empowers you to trust yourself so that no matter the situation, you can take care of your body’s needs to feel better.
Keep reading to learn more about a non-diet approach and what to expect when working with a non-diet dietitian.
What is a non-diet approach?
A non-diet approach to health keeps you and your body’s needs as the focus. Unlike most diet plans that leave you worrying about correctly tracking calories, macros, exercise, and body size.
The problem with diet plans is that for most people they don’t work for the long-term. Less than 20% of people are successful at long term weight loss. It’s why so many people are left feeling like they’ve tried every diet and nothing works for them.
Diet culture will tell you that failure rate is because you lack the willpower and discipline to succeed. But with such a low success rate clearly dieting is part of the problem.
Most dieting tips and methods teach you not to trust yourself around food, and create an emotional sense of scarcity around the foods that are limited.
Think about those common health tips like “don’t set yourself up for failure by keeping the bad foods in the house because if they are there you’ll be tempted and eventually eat the food”.
This tip seems helpful because it makes it harder to access the foods when you want them. But when you finally get that food again, it’s so much easier to overeat it because you rarely get to have it.
The diet approach to eating leads to thinking about food more often, guilt after eating, focusing on your weight and body size, exercising dread, and added stress to your day.
A non-diet approach teaches you to trust yourself around food so that you can easily make decisions that honor your body’s needs without stress or worry.
It creates a peaceful relationship with food. You’ll add in more movement because it feels good and you want to care for your body, not because you have to. And you’ll feel more comfortable in your body and heal a negative body image.
What to expect working with a non-diet dietitian
When working with a non-diet dietitian, they’ll work to get to know your specific needs, background, and desired relationship with food and health. There is a general framework to a non-diet approach to eating, but it’s always tailored to your needs.
Examples of what your non-diet dietitian will teach you how to do:
- Trust your body’s hunger and fullness cues
- Let go of dieting beliefs
- Understand your different types of hunger
- Choose what you want to think about food, exercise, and your body
- Change your relationship with your body and body image
- Use a gentle nutrition approach to eating
- Add in more exercise that feels good to you and you actually want to do
A non-diet dietitian will empower you to be the decision-maker. It’s tricky to move from following all these different diet rules to suddenly following a way with no rules about what you can eat. That freedom can feel overwhelming in the beginning.
So your non-diet dietitian will help provide structure and information to help you work through the unhelpful beliefs to unlock the easy relationship with food that is possible for anyone.
What to look for when choosing a non-diet dietitian
A non-diet dietitian will support you as a guide to learn to trust your ability to make decisions about food. It becomes a partnership where the non-diet dietitian helps teach you to understand your body’s cues, let go of dieting beliefs, and create a relationship with food, exercise, and your body that helps you feel better.
So when you’re looking for a non-diet dietitian there are a few things to look for. There are multiple dietitians doing this work, which is great because not everyone will be a fit for you.
First, you’ll want to consider your learning style and what their program offers.
Do you like having videos you can go back and listen to?
Do you like workbooks and questions where you can write things out?
Do you like learning with others and a community or want individual conversations?
Think about how you’ve learned skills best in the past, and find a program that supports those learning needs.
Another question is whether 1-on-1 coaching or a group program will work for you. There are great things about both options. With 1-on-1 coaching you’ll get individual time working with the dietitian, which could be helpful to work through your beliefs creating a negative relationship with food.
On the other hand, group programs are incredible for connecting with other people experiencing similar challenges, gaining a sense of community, and sometimes you can learn more by watching other people get coached because it often applies to something you’re also experiencing.
Lastly, you’ll want to pay attention to the person you’re working with. Does the way they teach and explain things resonate with you?
It works better if you can have a sense of trust with the person you’ll be working with because it can be challenging to talk about some of the body, nutrition, and exercise topics.
I know I carried so much shame for not being able to figure out how to make a diet work that I didn’t want to talk about that with anyone unless it was to crack a joke about it. So working with someone you can feel comfortable with may be the most important part.