Caroline Dooner

I am a heterosexual woman looking for a relationship with someone I am attracted to, has a sense of humor, and isn’t a serial killer or too depressive. Someone that hopefully doesn’t have children, lives within…three hours of me, doesn’t think that monogamy “just isn’t natural,” and wants to date me, maybe even forever. That’s basically all I am looking for.

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.

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?

These are two concepts that I think we are all a little confused about. Even writing on this topic for four years, it’s taken me time to master explaining the difference between emotional eating and bingeing. We often use those two terms as if they’re interchangeable. But they’re absolutely not the same thing!

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.

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."

In response to Nicole Arbour's fat shaming video. . .

The truth is, your body does not want you to restrict your food, and it does not want you to lose weight, especially when it feels like food is scarce. So, your body will sabotage your efforts almost every time — while also making it harder and harder to lose weight the more 'famines' you put it through.