Caroline Dooner

Pretending you’re OK when you're not is lying — lying to yourself. And it will keep you not OK.

Do you feel like you have an addiction to food? Do you think about it all the time? Fixate on it? Crave it constantly? Feel like you have no control once you start? Do you just eat and eat and eat until you are stuffed and miserable?

Our culture has decided that gaining weight is the worst thing ever. And we have gotten the message in a multitude of sneaky or super blatant ways.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people are really resistant to movements that aim to inspire people to drop the fight against weight. There are lots of fat-haters.

You can improve your health without losing weight!

I’ve heard this so many times: “Your talk of normal eating and body love is all good and fine — but I need to lose weight.” This is what I have to say to you: You don’t.

Have you ever noticed how cultish fad diets can be? I didn’t, because I was in the cult. And cult members never think they are part of a cult. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that today’s diets may be filling the same human societal role that religions fill, and not in a good way.

I teach people how to eat normally after dieting. And across the board, the people I work with all describe themselves as “type A personalities” or “perfectionists.”

So what’s the difference between dieting and eating disorders? Not much. It all depends on how obsessive you are with it, and how much mental and emotional space it takes up in our minds. Like most things, eating disorders exist on a spectrum.

We haven’t quite escaped the influence of the Puritans yet...We still tend to regard our bodies, our eating, our desires, and anything else of this earth as “bad,” “weak,” or “sinful.”