Caroline Dooner

It’s that time of year when everyone is obsessed with not eating too much food. It’s like a cultural rite of passage: Will you complain about how much food you’re eating this holiday? Will you discuss how bad you’ve been and how you plan on repenting come January 1st?

How many diets are out there? How many of them are backed by doctors and gurus who claim they know “the most natural way to eat” or “the fastest way to burn fat and never gain it back!” or “the most definite way to never be hungry again, become beautiful, have everyone love you, and have all your dreams come true!”? So many.

I have a confession: Until recently, I didn’t even know what “patriarchal society” meant. Yeah, I’m one of those feminists who grew up believing I didn’t need feminism.

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.

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.

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.

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

We have been told that that's how it works: calories in vs calories out. "Eat less than you expend and you'll lose weight."

Dieting is bad for your body, health, relationship with food, relationship with your body, metabolism, and really bad for natural weight stabilization. Of course we are not taught that. We are taught in so many ways that dieting works long-term (it doesn’t) and that losing weight is the simplest and easiest life enhancement we can pursue (it’s not).