Caring for Your Body Through a Non-Diet Lens

Last week, I posed a question to a client that left her momentarily speechless:

If weight loss wasn’t your north star, how might you take care of your body?

She paused, clearly puzzled, before finally admitting,

“Kate, I have no idea how to look after myself if weight loss isn’t the measure of success. I’ve always viewed nutrition and health through the lens of shrinking, toning, controlling, or changing my body. I’ve never considered caring for my body as I would someone I love. It’s making my heart race just thinking about it.”

For many of us, especially if our bodies don’t conform to societal standards, this question has never crossed our minds. The idea that we might care for our body rather than control it can feel entirely foreign.

This beautiful client of mine started her first official diet at just nine years old. She was dragged along to a WW meeting, too young to sign up herself, but old enough to absorb the teachings. She had spent her life swimming in the language of body dissatisfaction with warnings of ill health, threats that no one would love or employ her and subtle, yet clear messages from the world her body was wrong.  Now, as the newest unofficial recruit of WW, she clung to her tracking book, believing it was her golden ticket to salvation! If she just followed along she too could have the body. Those diet culture seeds started to take root in her heart and mind and became her truth.

Over decades, those marble tracks, aka neural pathways in her brain became deeply entrenched with the idea that her body was broken and needed fixing. For many, the pursuit of weight loss becomes an integral part of their identity. You might recognize this pattern in yourself or someone close to you—where every conversation seems to circle back to weight or diets. Having been there myself, it made complete sense that the idea of swapping self-control for self-care felt rebellious to her. It felt almost dangerous to not focus on her weight anymore.

When we first learn about a non diet approach to nutrition and health, it can bring up all the feels. On one hand, it can feel like a revelation, shedding light on years of dieting struggles. The freedom that a non-diet approach offers is liberating, though it may also bring much uncertainty.

On the other hand, it can be confusing—questions arise, such as: Surely there’s a safe and effective way to lose weight long-term? Why would my doctor advise weight loss if it wasn’t safe or possible? This confusion can lead to feelings of helplessness, realizing that you may be ‘stuck’ in your current body for the rest of your life.

An unexpected emotion that will often surface when we learn the truth about weight science is heartbreak. Discovering that all those hours, all that mental energy, and all that money spent on shrinking your body was ultimately futile can be devastating. This is where body grief steps in—recognizing that the dream body was a fantasy, never meant to be yours, is a crucial part of healing.

Your relationship with food and body image has been shaped by a culture that profits of your body insecurities. This culture creates the problem areas, and then sells you the solution. We don't need to fix our bodies; they were never broken, even when they don’t fit that societal mould.

When I asked this client if she perhaps was trying to find a solution to something that wasn’t broken, she burst into tears.

"I have always thought of myself as broken. As a work in progress. I took on the responsibility for my ‘brokenness’ when I was 9 years old and have tried everything except surgy to fix it. Kate you are the first person that has ever told me it’s ok to live in a body that doesn’t fit into a ‘healthy’ BMI. I have so much unlearning to do. Realising the power that number has had my whole life and learning about the binge restrict cycle fuelled by dieting makes so much sense to me. Why did my doctor never tell me about that! I feel like I have to unlearn just about everything I know about nutrition and start again."

And she's right. We aren’t taught about nutrition from a place of self care. We aren’t taught that the ‘how’ to eat is just as important as the ‘what’ to eat. “Healthy eating’ in our culture is code for low fat, sugar free, low carb, no gluten, reduced calories. If you spend a minute and zoom out on what health means to you, you’ll find it probably doesn’t align with those food rules. A non diet approach invites us to consider all the things food does for our body and the ways it can support our health, not what it takes away. Gentle nutrition allows us to rethink about food from a whole different perspective.

Learning this new language of body kindness and self-compassion can feel clunky and confusing, especially if you’ve been steeped in diet culture from an early age. But if you’re finding it difficult, that’s a sign you’re on the right track!

It feels clunky and confusing and awkward because it’s new, not because you are doing it wrong or too far gone, so I encourage you to keep practising.

Keep practising this new language, beautiful human.

Keep practising your quest to cultivate self-compassion and self-care.

Keep practising curiosity.

Keep practising body kindness.

Keep asking, “What might my body need today?”.

Keep taking tiny baby steps towards the direction you are going.

Keep advocating for all bodies, even when you don’t know exactly what to say or how to say it.

Surround yourself with people speaking this confusing yet enlightening new language and if you need some support in your practice, I would love to help. Join me and a beautiful community in my brand new non diet nutrition and body image healing membership called The Body Light Collective. Here, we focus on food freedom and body peace with bite (sized) modules, and we connect each month for live small group coaching sessions. Doors for the founding member offer close on August 31, 2024. [Learn more and register here.]

Beautiful human, you were put on this plant to pursue so much more than a BMI or the next fad diet. Let’s rewrite the next chapter of your body story together.