Diet Culture

170: (Transcript) Unshackled: Claim Your Power and Live Fully Without Diets (Part 3)

February 4, 2025

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A Certified Eating Disorders Registered Dietitian (CEDRD) with a master's degree in dietetics & nutrition. My passion is helping you find peace with food - and within yourself.

Meet Katy

Well, hello, Katy here, and welcome back to a VERY special series on the Rebuilding Trust With Your Well, hello, Katy here, and welcome back to a VERY special series on the Rebuilding Trust With Your Body podcast. This is episode 3 of a 3-part series, so if you haven’t listened to parts 1 and 2 yet, go back to the beginning and listen to them in order (the previous 2 episodes are the ones right before this in the podcast feed, episodes 168 and 169). I dropped all 3 episodes at once, so you can binge them all at once and create some massive momentum on your journey towards freedom with food, honoring your health and feeling comfortable with your body. 

Recap 1st 2 episodes:

  • In the first episode we talked about the grip that diet culture has on us, and how it feeds off our fear, our insecurities and our unexamined beliefs that we often carry around unconsciously that are actually holding us back from having the health and comfort with our bodies that we so deeply desire. 
  • In episode 2 we talked about strengthening your intuition and focusing on HOW to rebuild TRUST with your body

In this episode we’re going to talk about claiming your power, living your life fully, and letting go of food guilt and rules, and what to do about your fear of weight gain or your desire to lose weight.

Make sure you listen all the way until the end of this episode because I have something extra special (and totally free) for you that is going to help you with your fears and concerns around weight and health in particular, because I know that for a lot of you listening to this, that’s a big part of why you have done so much dieting – because you want to lose weight, you want to be healthier, you want to feel better and more physically comfortable IN your body, and you want to feel better ABOUT your body. We are going to tackle those things together, so make sure you listen until the end and I’m going to cover that a bit here, and give you an incredible free resource that will knock your socks off.

Claiming Your Power

  • Taking back your power from diet culture. Stop giving them your time, energy, money and letting them prey on your insecurities that they created.
  • Take back your health. 
  • Take back your right to enjoy food without feeling guilty.
  • Take back your LIFE…(next section)

Living Your Life FULLY (lots of examples)

  • How dieting holds us back from living life fully
    • Client example: I had a client once who wouldn’t eat at restaurants with her family. She was so strict and rigid with whatever diet she was on at the time and had a really strong rule in her mind that eating out was unhealthy, so she either wouldn’t go, or she would go and just order water. She was missing out on so much connection by avoiding restaurants, and even when she was there she was keeping herself on the sidelines by not fully participating. Once she worked through her fear of eating at restaurants it has opened up her life so much more to enjoyable social experiences, date nights with her husband, and vacations. 
    • Let me give you another example…I had another client who perpetually told herself she couldn’t do things until she reached her goal weight. So she wasn’t letting herself go swimming, or get family photos done, and when she would go to her kids’ events at school or sporting events she wouldn’t socialize with the other moms because she was so ashamed of her body so she’d hang out in her car or sit off to the side and pretend to be busy on her phone so nobody would talk to her. She was living her life according to her body shame – and she had created this fantasy of all the things she would do when she lost the weight…the problem was she was putting her life on hold for this arbitrary goal. And it wasn’t until we flipped the script and helped her to start living her life NOW rather than waiting, that she realized that she is worthy of connection, and getting in the pool, going on vacation, being in the photos, making friends with the moms of her kids, and showing up as a participant in her own life, rather than sitting on the sidelines. 
  • Imagine this with me…
    • You’re eating the cake at your kid’s (or grandkid’s, or niece or nephew’s) birthday party without obsessing over how many calories are in the frosting
    • You can go to a new restaurant w/o researching the “healthiest” option
    • You can go to the movies and get popcorn AND candy if you’re in the mood for it, and you can skip it if not. And both of these options feel equally doable.
    • You can take a yoga or spin class without thinking about how many calories you’re burning or what food you’re going to reward yourself with now that you’ve earned it

Letting Go of Food Guilt & Rules

  • Impossible set of rules to follow from diet culture (list examples)
    • Don’t eat processed foods – but here’s a bunch of supplements, greens powders and protein shakes…that are processed…
    • Don’t eat carbs, sugar, processed food, foods too high in calories, red meat, non-organic vegetables, fruits (those are too high in sugar), dairy, gluten – what CAN you eat?
    • Don’t drink juice or soda or other sugary beverages, but definitely spend $14 on a cold pressed juice in the name of health that’s exactly the same thing
  • You’re not a good/bad person based on what you eat – stop assigning morality to food
  • At the end of the day, all food breaks down into the same 3 macronutrients inside your GI tract
  • 2 of the principles of IE are “make peace w/ food” and “challenge the food police”
  • Attunement disruptors
  • What I teach inside NDA is to think of food in terms of what it breaks down into, so that you can neutralize it in your mind, which allows you to eat what you are craving and desiring, as well as honoring your health with the gentle nutrition side of things in order to give your body what it needs. 
  • Bust the myth that IE doesn’t care about health or that you can’t choose balanced nutrition or intentionally have gentle boundaries w/ food to honor your health

Dealing With Your Fear of Weight Gain (Or Your Desire to Lose Weight)

  • Normalize the fear of weight gain and desire to lose weight as part of the grip of diet culture
  • Point out irony that dieting is #1 predictor of weight GAIN
  • Dieting drives UP your set point weight
  • By no longer dieting, you are giving your body the chance you find the weight it is most comfortable at, but you first have to heal your metabolism (all of this is somewhat complicated…introduce masterclass)
  • If this is something that you are worried about or are struggling with, I 10/10 recommend that you get inside my on-demand masterclass called Navigating the Balancing Act. In this powerful free training, I’ll walk you through:
    • ⚖️ How to navigate the “messy middle” where you know dieting doesn’t work but you also want to feel more comfortable in (and about) your body.
  • ⚖️ My top 3 ACTIONABLE strategies to start feeling better in your body RIGHT NOW (even if part of you still desperately wants to lose weight).
  • ⚖️ A proven framework to improve your health, confidence and body image, AND how you can simultaneously achieve peace and freedom with food along the way (whoop whoop! 😍)

As we wrap up this 3-part series, I want you to be gentle with yourself if you are seeing that diet culture has been continuing to secretly control your every move. 

Don’t worry, I get it, and there is no judgment here. I see you, I get you, and most of my clients have been there…And in order to get to a place where you are healing your relationship with food, this uneasy season is a rite of passage to get there.

This Is exactly why I created this 3-part podcast series specifically designed for those of you who are considering starting or continuing your journey with IE, but you still have doubts about giving up dieting or some of those food rules.  

It is my hope that if you feel like IE isn’t working for you right now, you can see exactly why…

..It’s because you need to get out of the grip, the chokehold, that diet culture has on you, because it’s the way that you’re still standing with one foot in diet culture that’s making your IE attempts fail time and time again so you give up and think it’s not working. 

I want to give you hope that you CAN find the peace and freedom with food that you yearn for, while also honoring your health, and that you can find your way through this messy middle.

That Navigating the Balancing Act masterclass is really going to help you have a clear sense of direction on where to go from here, especially if your weight is still one of the things that is top of mind for you, and you get that dieting doesn’t work, and you want to let go of all the dieting behaviors, but you’re scared about your weight and your health – I’m going to show you how to work through all of that with some clear guidance and really practical steps inside this free on-demand masterclass. 

 That’s a wrap on this 3-part series! I had so much fun doing this, and I hope that you are feeling more clear and confident.

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