Do you ever get tripped up wondering how you can possibly be healthy if you’re no longer dieting? Like, how can it *actually* be healthy to eat the foods you want without dieting and restricting “bad” foods? I see and I hear you!
A lot of people feel this way. They step off the dieting bandwagon, and enter into the world of intuitive eating yearning for peace and freedom with food. But sometimes that inadvertently becomes a free-for-all with food.
So if someone wants to work on their health, how do they do it without slipping back into the diet mentality? It’s totally possible, and you’re going to see how!
What’s really important here first is that you see how easy it is to slip back into the diet mentality when we start talking about health, because diet culture has co-opted health in so many distorted ways.
Knowing this allows you to approach it with eyes wide open.
I want to reassure you that within the intuitive eating and non-diet framework we care very much about health! In fact, we are huge cheerleaders for health!
Let me remind you of a few REALLY important points:
- Dieting is shown to damage your health, especially when done repeatedly (i.e. yo-yo dieting).
- Dieting is correlated with worse health markers such as cholesterol, blood pressure, inflammation and depression.
- Dieting also correlates with poor nutritional balance.
Moral of the story: Diets suck.
And here’s the beautiful thing! We can approach health without dieting! In fact, it’s better for your health to do it this way!
Here are a few examples:
- Getting enough sleep
- Drinking enough water
- Eating a wide variety of foods
- Including fruits and veggies in ways that are enjoyable
- Being physically active
We can do any of these things without dieting.
So how do we create healthy habits that stick? Without it becoming a diet?
I recently sat down on my podcast with a fellow non-diet dietitian named Jenna Waite and we talked about this exact topic.
In this episode Jenna talks about how to feel comfortable in your body in a fatphobic world. She shares how she grew up in a larger body and went down the path of trying to change and control it, and how she learned to accept her body and find peace within herself.
We covered what it means to be healthy regardless of your size – and how weight actually isn’t a very good indicator of health. Jenna drops some serious wisdom about how we can create healthy habits in our lives that are different from dieting.
We also talk about how a lot of the intuitive eating dietitians on social media are thin white women, and how Jenna is embracing the fact that she’s in a small-fat body as an asset for connecting with clients and helping to diversity the body types in the field of dietetics.
In a nutshell, this episode is about:
- Being healthy WITHOUT dieting
- What is “fatphobia” and why is it a problem?
- How women can feel comfortable in their own skin, even if they have a bigger body
- What it’s like to be an RD in a bigger body
- Creating sustainable habits in our lives – and her best tips for people who are wanting to create healthier habits without dieting
You’ll get a TON of value out of this episode. Go check it out and let me know what you think!
>> Click here to listen to episode 43 of the Rebuilding Trust With Your Body podcast on Apple podcasts!
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Search for episode 43 – Creating Healthy Habits Without the Diet Mentality With Jenna Waite
Links mentioned in the show:
Connect with Jenna Waite:
- FB group: www.facebook.com/groups/findingtruehealth
- Website: www.jennawaite.com
- Instagram: @jennawaite_rd
- Online program: www.healththroughhabits.com
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If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more people — just like you — move toward healing their relationship with food and their body image.
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Let’s get connected!
- Instagram: @katyharvey.rd
- Facebook: KatyHarveyRD
Looking for more support on your journey to food freedom and body acceptance?
- Join my Facebook group & community “Intuitive Eating Made Easy”
- Take my FREE quiz “What’s Your Unique Path to Food Freedom?”
- Save $120 on HelloFresh, my fav food delivery service!
- Check out my course, Non-Diet Academy
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