If I let myself eat whatever I want, won’t I eat cookie dough until I explode?

But Katie, if I let myself eat whatever I want, I am going to want NOTHING but flourless chocolate cake.

I hear this a lot from people who’ve spent years or decades “managing” their eating in one way or another — through mainstream diets or personal guidelines like “don’t eat more than three bites of dessert.” They’re pretty terrified of giving up all of those rules in favor of a non-dieting or intuitive way of eating.

And I don’t blame them. Most of us have had pretty scary “overindulgent” eating experiences when we’ve boomeranged OFF of those restrictions — eating a whole pint of ice cream and a family sized bag of chips in one sitting.

So we’re pretty afraid that we’ll do the same thing again.
And then never stop.
Ever.

The short-term answer to that question of “will I want to eat tons and tons of junk?” is yes. Yes, you probably will want to eat tons and tons of junk.

But the long answer is no, you won’t want to eat only junk forever.

—

When you first take away all of the rules, in any area of life, you’re going to do the opposite of what you were “forcing” yourself to do. Think about a time when you’d worked hard at school or your job for days or weeks or months, and you finally had some free time. Did you want to be super productive? Did you crave checking a million things off of your virtuous to-do list?

Probably not. You probably wanted to be a Totally Useless Ball of Mush, who mostly watched TV, noodled around on the Internet, and ate pancakes.

But eventually, if you gave yourself enough time and space, at a certain point being a Totally Useless Ball of Mush would stop feeling good.

You might want to do some errands,
or clean your house,
or exercise,
or see friends,
or go to the dentist.

It wouldn’t be that you’d stop wanting to lie on the couch and watch “The Bachelor.” It’s just that your reality TV needs would eventually be in balance with your needs to live in a nice home, have a body that feels good, have clean teeth, etc. — so you’d do what you needed to do to take care of all of those things.

—

It’s exactly the same thing with food. When we know that we’re allowed to do what we need to do to “take care of ourselves,” in the most holistic sense, the prioritization becomes clear.

Yes, for the first day or week or four months or whatever, we may choose bacon cheeseburgers and double-chocolate brownies (or whatever happens to be your favorite).

But when we truly relax into the fact that we can have these things anytime we want, we realize that having these extremely indulgent foods for every meal just isn’t the best self-care.

We realize that excellent self-care means having these foods, but balancing them out with foods that help us feel good in our bodies and have the energy to get through our day, and more.

—

There’s one really important thing about this whole “let yourself have what you like” business. Did you catch it?

You have to give yourself time and space to figure this stuff out.

If you are constantly thinking, in the back of your head: I’m going to do this “non-dieting” thing for a week, and if it doesn’t work, I’m going back to Atkins, it won’t work. You’ll eat everything in sight even if you’re not hungry, because in the back of your mind you’ll be thinking, I only have one week! Gotta eat it all now!

So if you haven’t let yourself have grilled cheese sandwiches for years, when you actually let yourself have what you like, you’re going to probably want a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches.

But if you stay with it, over time your food consumption will come to reflect your multifaceted needs. Your needs for delicious foods and for convenience. Your needs to connect with others and to not spend too much money and to feel good in your body.

Or whatever your needs happen to be.

—

How long will it take? I have no idea — everyone is so different, and it depends on your dieting history, your level of honesty with yourself, and many other factors.

For me, the mostly-eating-cupcakes-and-milk phase lasted a couple of months. Then my eating started to look a bit more “normal” — though I still ate a lot of peanut butter cups for dinner. It was probably nearly a year before the idea of “vegetables as snacks” appealed, but it genuinely did appeal (and does to this day).

And you know what? When it wasn’t completely terrifying, the mostly-eating-cupcakes-and-pie-and-milk phase was incredibly fun and liberating.

You might like it :)

—

Still terrified about this journey? I can’t recommend getting support enough. If you’d like to work with me, I do individual coaching, and run super fun small group mentorship programs (as you've probably heard :) called Dessert Clubs.

It's important that I tell you this.

There’s something I want to say, in case it wasn’t 100% clear:

The Dessert Club will NOT fix all of your eating or life issues.

What the Dessert Club will do is jumpstart the process of learning to eat without worry, obsession, or compulsion. You’ll likely have “ah-ha” moments, and experience some things that will surprise and delight you (I only ate half a cookie because I only wanted that much! I’ve literally never done that before!).

You’ll walk away with a toolbox of strategies, exercises, and readings that you can continue to explore on your journey. Participants often revisit each of our weekly exercises after the group ends, to keep practicing the things we discussed.

At the end of eight weeks, you’ll probably feel more relieved, excited, and confident that you now have a path forward to stop feeling crazy about food.

But will you be a 100% perfect intuitive eater in only eight weeks? No. You won’t.

And frankly, anyone who tells you that “all your problems will be fixed” in a month or eight weeks or even six months is being dishonest. Any major shift is going to take ongoing work over an extended time period of time.

—

That being said, I still recommend the Dessert Club with all of my heart. I recommend it because I’ve heard over and over from past participants that it was a powerful eight weeks, even if it didn’t fix all of their problems.

Here’s what one recent participant said:

“If you are considering it because having issues with food resonates with you, just do it. It's not going to solve all of your problems with food or make it go away, but it gives you guidance on how to start to address these issues. It gives you tools and experiences to help you change yourself. It gives you peace of mind knowing you aren't alone, and it gives you confidence that change is possible.” — Megan, Texas
(Thank you, Megan! Very honestly said.)

So I’d love to have you join the Dessert Club. It’s a truly unique experience, and the winter groups are open for enrollment now.

—

p.s. I wrote an article for Ravishly this week about the big changes in my non-food life that came about because I changed by relationship with food. It's called "The Completely Unexpected Side Affects of Intuitive Eating," and you can view it here, if you'd like

The absolute first thing you should do after eating too much

What do you tend to do after a binge or overeating “episode”?

Do you plunge into the next thing on your to-do list with extra gusto?
Do you beat yourself up?
Do you go on Instagram? :)

Eating too much can spur a lot of feelings and thoughts, and if we’re not really thoughtful about what we do next, we can spiral out of control (either to self-hatred, or to another diet). I wanted to give you some real talk on the one single thing that is most important to do after eating too much. And I wanted you to hear it from me, so I recorded a video.

I’d love to hear: have you ever actually tried this strategy after a binge? What feels scary or hard about it? What feels easy? Let me know in the comments below!

A radical suggestion about exercise

Here's an idea: What if you stopped using willpower to motivate yourself to exercise?

A lot of us use only exercise because we force ourselves to exercise. We say things like, I’ve just gotta get myself to take that run, and, Oh man, it took a lot of willpower to get to the gym today.

And this can work, when our lives are relatively calm. We might even feel virtuously satisfied when we’re exhausted afterwards. Because, did I mention? Most of the exercise we are forcing ourselves to do is pretty intense.

At some point, though, it stops working. Maybe it’s because we get busy or maybe it’s because, uh, it wasn’t that fun and it was really hard and maybe even painful, and we just don’t have enough willpower to force ourselves. And then we start feeling guilty and not-so-good in our bodies.

Then maybe we eat more because we feel not-so-good in our bodies.
And then we feel really guilty and swear that we need to run four miles every day next week.

I think you can see where this is going. There are a lot of similarities between the binge-and-restrict cycle with food and with exercise.

—

So that’s where my radical suggestion comes in: Stop doing that.

Stop doing exercise that doesn’t feel good.
Stop doing exercise that requires willpower.
Stop doing exercise that you don’t genuinely enjoy.

And start exercising in a way that you enjoy. Start exercising because you want to, not because you have to.

The magical thing about doing exercise that feels good and that you enjoy doing is that it creates a positive feedback loop. You enjoy doing it, so then you do it. Then you feel good and happy, and want to do it again.

—

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking Well, Katie, if I only did the exercise I felt like doing, I wouldn’t exercise at all. I’d just sit on my couch and watch Millionaire Matchmaker reruns.

To which I’d say: If you want to rest and watch reality TV, please rest and watch reality TV.

Our bodies have a natural appetite for movement. Movement feels good. But it’s possible that you’ve spent so long with a f***ed up attitude toward movement or exercise, that you don’t even feel hungry for it anymore.

So rest for a while. Rest for as long as you need — and yes, it might be longer than you are intellectually “comfortable” with. When your body wants to move, it will let you know.

—

One more thing: the movement your body wants might be different than the “exercise” you’ve been forcing it to do for the past month/year/decade. You might want to, say, spend 15 minutes stretching to the Hamilton soundtrack. Or walk around the neighborhood for a half hour while talking to your mom on the phone.

Letting yourself do the movement you like and that feels good requires tuning in to your true desires, which may be different than you expect, and may also vary by the day.

Which is all to say: Listen to yourself. Listen for the nuanced, unconventional, surprising whispers. You know best.

Q&A Sunday: How to eat intuitively when you have health issues

How do I go about changing my relationship with food in light of the whole "health thing"? How do I swear off dieting when I NEED to lose weight (and I mean doctor-recommended, at risk of suffering from problems like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, etc.)?  

Is there a way to make healthier choices, cut out sugar, eat less, without making it into a diet? Because as soon as I implement any kind of guidelines, they become rigid rules and my black-and-white brain goes right back into diet-restriction-binge mode. :-(

- Carolyn

Carolyn, the short answer is: YES.

Yes, it is possible to make healthier choices to reduce your risk of disease — which might mean eating less sugar or just choosing healthier things in general — without turning it into a diet.

Here’s the trick, though:

You have to make healthier choices with the sole goal of being healthier. And you have to stop trying to lose weight.

Why? Because it’s possible to improve your health — and, as a result, lower your risk of diabetes or heart disease or almost any other problematic health issue — without ever losing a pound.

Yep, you read that right.

You can be significantly healthier — by eating healthier foods, exercising more, or taking on many other lifestyle changes — without losing any weight at all.

This point is really, really, important. When we are dieting, we often lose touch with what we truly want because we have to reach that very specific goal. So we take on habits that make us miserable and aren’t sustainable and ultimately lead to binge mode, as it sounds like you’ve experienced. (And, frankly, we’ve all experienced).

If you take “I want to lose weight” out of the equation, and you focus on health as an end in and of itself, then it is more likely that you will choose sustainable practices and incorporate reasonable flexibility.

If you are really hungry one day, you’ll eat more.
If you find yourself at an incredibly delicious French patisserie, you’ll have some crème puffs.
If you feel exhausted from life and being a bad-ass lady, you’ll rest and not exercise.

This advice comes from a really practical place. It would be fine to try to have weight loss as your primary goal if it would actually work for you…but based on what you’ve written, it sounds like all diets do is send you into a tailspin of deprivation, frustration, and overeating. (And, frankly, an overwhelming amount of research is beginning to suggest that most people have this reaction to dieting)

So why not just focus on your health, as a goal in and of itself?

You might lose weight from all this healthy living. But if the worst case scenario is that you are healthier — from eating more fruits and vegetables or exercising more or whatever it is that you do — would that really be so bad?

—

One last thing:

I’m not a doctor, so it’s possible that your doctor might disagree. He or she might say, “No, focusing on health isn’t good enough! You must focus on weight loss!”

But I also wonder what your doctor would say if you brought him or her the full picture of your past experiences with dieting, restriction, and bingeing, and suggested that at least for now, you just focus on your health instead so that you don’t end up in a tailspin that makes things worse in the end. Maybe you could even read Health at Every Size and bring him or her some of the data from Dr. Bacon’s very well researched book (she even has an example cover letter for doctors at the end!).

It’s also worth noting that doctors at times have a bias toward “weight loss” as the only possible health improvement lever — when this isn’t necessarily true. You have a right to a doctor who sees you as a whole, complex person. If you don’t feel treated this way by your doctor, I hope you can find the courage to find a doctor who does treat you this way. Asking, for example, if they know the Health at Every Size methodology is a great way to see if you can find a doctor who will work with you on your specific goals.

—

Carolyn, I’m so glad you asked this question. I know it’s something that’s probably on the mind of many other people — you are not alone.

And I hope you know that I’m sending tons of love your way. Whatever you decide, I fully support you.

And if you’d like your question answered in my Q&A feature, shoot me an email at katie@dessertclub.com!

A holiday reminder

Just wanted to send a holiday reminder: You are enough.

No matter what anyone at your holiday gatherings says, thinks, or implies with a side glance…you are enough.

Regardless of how much you weigh, how insecure or awkward you feel, how successful you are at your job, whether you have a romantic partner or not…you are enough.

You. Are. Enough.

p.s. This has been a quick, gentle way for me to feel more relaxed and like myself, this holiday season.

p.p.s. If you're feeling overwhelmed with the food + weight stuff, and would like some support, it might be helpful to join a Dessert Club in the new year. Here's what one past participant said:

"Before joining the Dessert Club, I felt like they would never be a time when I didn't have an issue with food. I was in a hopeless cycle of restriction and bingeing. And I felt anxious about any attempts to solve the issue as I was nervous I would put on weight.

“[To other women who are struggling], I'd say relax. It's okay to get help. Stop carrying the burden alone. For me the Dessert Club will be the best decision I've made to help me grow as a person and enjoy life to the fullest. "

—Anita, UK (thank you Anita!) :)

On loveliness.

Imagine a future version of yourself — 30, 40, or even 50 years from now.

Your skin may be sagging and worn by the sun.
Your eyes may be crinkled from decades of smiles and tears.
You move more slowly.
Your joints and muscles tend to ache.
You’ve lived a long, full life.
Now please imagine that older, wiser, future you is looking at current you right now.

In whatever you happen to be wearing. Whatever your hair happens to look like. Whatever is going on with your skin or clothes or mood or body or self-confidence.

How do you think that future version of yourself feels about your belly, thighs, hips, arms? Whether they are round or slender? Whether you are at your “goal” weight or twenty pounds over?

When I started writing this for you, I wasn’t feeling very gorgeous. I have cramps and pimples and I’m wearing pink pajama pants covered in Christmas cats. I may or may not have eaten a large quantity of apple pie this afternoon.

And yet, when I consider myself from the perspective of this much older version of myself, I had this flash of insight: I am radiant and lovely and full of life.

I am radiant and lovely and full of life. I certainly don’t find myself thinking that about myself all the time. It’s something I’m more likely to think about babies – with their fat, soft, perfect skin – than myself.

And yet. And yet, when I am no longer trapped in my current narrative about myself — when I can think of myself as a bit older, a bit wiser, less anxious about the present — it’s so much easier to see.

—

Nothing has physically changed, of course. I am still wearing these pink Christmas cat pajamas. And yet, when I imagine myself closer to the end of my life, it feels so clear to me: I am truly lovely.

It is a kind of loveliness that comes from deep inside me, from my aliveness. And even without knowing you, I feel sure that you are lovely, too.

—

Your challenge for this week is to imagine your future self. What would he or she think about your current body? Write a message from Future You on a Post-it note, and leave it where Current You can see it.  

And for an extra-special bonus: tell us in the comments what you wrote or would write! I'm sure we'd all love to trade notes :)

Something I tell myself all the time...

You know those moments when you’re not even hungry but you’re face-to-face with something delicious — say, the thickest, most dense brownie in the world?

And even though you know in your soul that you don’t truly want this food…you really, really want this food?

I have those moments all the time.

And while there’s nothing wrong with choosing to eat even though you’re not hungry, sometimes you’d just prefer not to eat but it’s really, really hard to resist.

So I wanted to share something that I say to myself at least a couple of times a week — because, yes, I find myself in those moments at least that often.

Here it is: You can eat it the next time you are hungry.

­That’s it. It’s that simple.

Of course, I usually give myself a bit of a pep talk: Oh, Katie, I know that you really want to finish this bag of lime-infused tortilla chips. And, of course, you can have it now. But I think we both know that you won’t feel good if you have it right now, so why don’t you just save it for later? I promise you can have it the absolute next time you are hungry. I promise, promise, promise.

And I keep that promise. The very next time I’m hungry, whether it’s for a snack or breakfast or lunch or dinner, I’ll ask myself what I want and eat it. Sometimes I want what I saved for myself, and sometimes I don’t — but I always give myself the option.

Knowing that I can have it later, and that I’ll make good on my promise to myself, makes it possible for me to put down the brownie when I otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

So I wanted to share it with you, this little phrase that’s always in my back pocket: “You can have it the very next time you’re hungry.”

—

­Your challenge for this week is to write “You can have it the very next time you’re hungry” on a Post-it note, and keep it somewhere where you often find yourself over-eating — maybe next to your cookie cabinet, or freezer, or just near your table. Try to say it to yourself once this week, and notice how it feels.

And I’d love to hear how it goes in the comments!

A post-thanksgiving (or anytime) reminder

Thanksgiving happened in America this week, and I was thinking about you. And as the days kept passing, I had something that I really wanted you to know, just in case you felt scared or overwhelmed or frustrated with your eating this week:

No matter what you ate yesterday (or last week, or last month), you deserve to eat today.

I get it. If you think your eating has been “bad” for some reason in the past, it can be so tempting to restrict your eating today. 

But please don’t do that. Restricting perpetuates the binge-restrict cycle and sets you up for more bingeing, restriction, and guilt.

Restricting will make things worse.

The only way to break the cycle is to stop listening to our fears (I don’t deserve to eat that or I’m too heavy already), and start listening to actual, real signals:

Even if you ate too much yesterday, eat today.
Wait till you feel hungry, then eat something.
Eat something you’ll enjoy, and something that will make you feel good.

And please, do something to feel beautiful, something to connect yourself with the loveliness of the world. Because if you’re going down the “restriction” path, you’ve probably lost touch with loveliness.

And we all need loveliness.

--

Sending much post-Thanksgiving caring,
Katie

On beauty, worthiness, and presidential elections

I keep thinking about “beauty” and “worthiness,” this week. 

I’m thinking about those words because the man who we just elected President of the United States insults women by calling them “fat," tells women that they need to lose weight in order to be “good enough”, and rewards “beautiful” slender women by talking about how he’d like to sexually assault them. And of course, that is not nearly all he has said — he has said hurtful things about many people of a variety of races, body types, sexual orientations, abilities, and more.

Though I have objections, politically, to Donald Trump, that's not why my heart is broken this week.

My heart is broken because I'd always hoped that someone who spoke like that — who was racist and sexist and unkind, who told women that their bodies were the most important thing about them — would eventually be tossed out. Ignored. Punished.

Instead, we’ve elected a person who talks like that to the highest office in the United States. We’ve rewarded him. 

So I kept being angry this week. How the f*** can we have a president who thinks and talks about women and their bodies like that? 

But then I remembered: it’s not just our president-elect. It’s TV shows with only slender white women who have perfectly clear skin. It’s news programs where the woman looks like an ex-model (in glasses to make her look “serious”) and the guy is average at best. It’s every deodorant or yogurt or freaking Swiffer advertisement that suggests that if we just solved our unsightly smell/calcium/dust problem, we would suddenly have smooth hair and a flat belly. 

If you look for it, you can find reasons to feel that you are unattractive or unworthy anywhere. 

—

So in the end, I am reminded of a lesson I have learned before and keep learning again and again and again: we must define things for ourselves.

We have to define “beauty” for ourselves.
And “worthiness."
And “success.”
And “contentment.”
And “friendship” and “being a good person” and “having enough.”

Some of these are easier than others. “Success” is a long-standing trigger with me, but so too are “beauty” and “worthiness."

Hopefully, we will eventually change the world to make it kinder to people of all races, sexual orientations, abilities, genders, and body types. There is important work, political work, that we all must do in that direction. But in the mean time, we have to do our own work so that we know we are good enough.

--

So, in case after all of this self-defining you still aren’t sure…I just wanna make things clear:  I know for certain that you are beautiful and that you are enough. No matter who you are and how much you weigh and what you look like.

—

No matter your politics, please know that I am sending you much strength + support for the week ahead. 

You are allowed to Veg.

You are allowed to veg.

You are allowed to moodle. Putter. Loaf.

You are allowed to lie on your bed and do nothing but wiggle your toes.

Or put on all of your fancy running gear and get outside only to decide that it sounds nicer to sit on the bench and stare at the trees than to run three miles.

You are allowed to watch too many tv episodes. Or webisodes.

Or while away the hours checking out beautifully photographed pictures of food on a blog of a woman from Minnesota you’ve never met.

Or wear old stained sweatpants and sit on your couch reading romance novels.
You are allowed to do nothing that is at all productive.

You are allowed to “waste” a day.
Or two.
Or two hundred.

For a long time, I didn’t know this.

I mean, I kind of knew that “vegging” could be a thing. A thing that had to be crammed in between other types of things.

Things like reading assignments and test prep and writing essays and doing lab reports. And then things like being excellent at work and having friendships worthy of Instagram and networking.

I eventually discovered “deeper things”—journaling, meditation, asking myself “Who I Really Was” and “What I Really Wanted”—but it wasn’t until I learned how to veg that it actually took root.

Which was odd, because I always thought of vegging as decidedly un-deep. I mean, how is spending too long on celebrity gossip sites a meaningful endeavor?

But I eventually realized that the thing separating me from my truer self (as hippy dippy as that sounds) was that I didn’t know what my truer self actually wanted. I had spent so long forcing her to do things, and the only thing it had led me to was a bad relationship with food and a job that I didn’t actually want.

So I let myself do whatever “I” wanted.

And it turned out that I wanted to veg.

And once I let myself veg, let myself do nothing of any import at all for months (beyond showing for my job), that’s when the magic started happening.

That’s when my eating started to right itself. That’s when I started to get a kernel of an idea.

Out of the messy hair, old sweatpants, wasting a really incredible amount of time came a life more interesting or meaningful than all of that striving and pro-con lists and strategizing.

The vegging wasn’t the destination. But the vegging let me relax enough that I could connect with what I truly wanted.

What would you want if you stopped trying so hard and let yourself veg? 

Why I don't like the phrase "Emotional Eating"

Do you ever think, Oh, I’m not an emotional eater. I’ll be honest, I sometimes do, too. I often hate the phrase “emotional eating.”

For me, “emotional eating” conjures up women in rom-coms, crying over their mixed signals with Tom Hanks while they eat pints of ice cream. I’m not someone who just bawls over men and eats ice cream, so I must not be an emotional eater.

I think the reality of “emotional eating” is far more complex and subtle. And I think this distinction matters. Because if we can’t see ourselves in a label, we can’t get the support we need.

I wanted you to hear it from my mouth, so I made you a video :)

After watching it, I’d love to hear in the comments: do you think of yourself as an “emotional eater”? Why or why not?

Science Sunday: Long-term results of dieting

Let’s play a game: imagine that you were going to join a research study, and were allowed to join one of two groups:

• Group #1 was going to go on a conventional diet.
• Group #2 was going to learn how to trust themselves around food and like their bodies.

Which one would you choose? And what would you expect your outcome to be, two years from now?

Lucky for us, this peer-reviewed academic study was actually conducted, and its results were published in the Journal of the American Dietary Association.

Seventy-eight women, who were at least a size 16, were assigned randomly to either the conventional dieting or the non-dieting group.

The dieting group received education about nutrition and learned “how to count fat grams, understand food labels, and shop for food.” They were encouraged to moderately restrict their intake, keep a food diary, and lose weight slowly. They were also encouraged to exercise.

The non-dieting group learned what was called the Health At Every Size (HAES) curriculum, which is very similar to many of the things I write about here. They were encouraged to befriend their bodies, to move their bodies because it feels good, and to eat for health and for pleasure, without worrying about weight loss. Dr. Linda Bacon writes more about the HAES in her wonderful book, which is definitely worth the read.

And what happened?

Weight Loss. At the end of the study, the women in the dieting group lost weight, while the women in the non-dieting group did not—or at least not enough to be statistically significant. However, two years after the study had ended, the women in the dieting group had gained all of the weight back, while the women in the non-dieting group had maintained their weight.

Health. The non-dieters showed significant declines in “so-called ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol and blood pressure. They also significantly increased their activity level. At the end of year two, these same metrics stayed the same or worsened in the dieting group.

Happiness. Women in the non-dieting group had significant decreases in depression and increases in self-esteem, while the opposite was true in the dieting group.

Showing Up. It’s also worth noting that almost half of the dieters dropped out of the study, compared to only 8% of the non-dieting group. Which makes sense—I mean, how long do you want to stay on a diet?

Let’s just summarize here:

• The non-dieters had better health (as measured by cholesterol and blood pressure). The dieters didn’t.
• The non-dieters felt happier and better about their bodies and their lives. The dieters didn’t.
• The non-dieters kept going. More than half of the dieters just stopped showing up –and based on my own life experience, I’d guess that they were at home having some ice cream and wanting to scream at themselves because they “messed up” some part of the diet and couldn’t do it anymore.
• The non-dieters got to eat what they liked and didn’t need to obsess. The dieters got to keep “food diaries” to count their calories and fat grams.
• Oh, and no one really lost weight in the long term. (which is consistent with other research suggesting that no diet really works in the long term).

--

One more thing:

I know that it can be frustrating to read this kind of research—messages from “research studies” can be confusing and seem to support everything. So I wanted to share a bit more about the researchers on this study.

Linda Bacon, Ph.D., one of the researchers who conducted the study and the author of Health at Every Size, is definitely a diet skeptic, but it’s worth noting that not all of the researchers on the study shared her opinion.

In fact, Bacon teamed up with Dr. Judith Stern, a distinguished professor in the departments of nutrition and internal medicine at UC Davis, who has an impressive resume and, as Bacon writes in her book, “I knew she believed strongly in dieting and weight loss and would supervise the study carefully to ensure fair testing of the conventional model.”

In fact, Dr. Stern believed so strongly in the dieting and weight loss model that she was afraid that even conducting this study might be unethical: Dr. Stern was concerned that “if we didn’t encourage the women in our study to lose weight, we might be harming them.”

Dr. Stern was so skeptical of the non-dieting program that she required that the researcher’s test the women’s progress after three months, including surveys, blood samples, and weight. If they saw that in any way the women’s information was getting worse, they had to stop the study immediately.

So you can certainly say that the study was balanced.

--

Obviously, everyone needs to choose her own path. Though I have found setting aside dieting “rules” to be useful, I don’t think that it is a requirement for a happy life.

Here’s the question I have for you, no matter what path you are considering going down in terms of eating, weight, and happiness: Where do you want to be, two years from now? And what is going to help you get there?

I’d love to hear the answers from you, in the comments below :)

Oh please.

Oh please, girl.

Please stop pretending like you are a virtuous automaton.

Like your purpose in life is to accomplish to-do lists and eat reasonable portions of “healthy” foods and be nice to everyone.
Like you don’t have swirling dark messy juiciness inside of you.

Is that what you want? To spend the next twenty years doing to-do list after to-do list and eating pre-portioned meal after pre-portioned meal?

To feel like you are doing things as you absolutely “should”?

And yes, I know that there is a part of you that does want that. After all, you are so good! So nice! You do such good work and you care about everyone! And doing things precisely “right” is so satisfying and means that you never get in trouble.

I know that because I’ve been there.

But in the bigger sense: what is your life about?

Is it, just maybe, about feeling like the most vibrant, alive, genuine version of yourself?
Is it, just maybe, about being a bit more mushy?
Is it, just maybe, about being a bit more explosive?

Is it, just maybe, about being a bit more you?

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And will you find more "you-ness" in losing 3.5 pounds and fitting perfectly into those jeans?
Or is it somewhere else?
Somewhere more mysterious?
Somewhere more messy and chaotic and exciting and creative and alive?

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Losing weight and being yourself aren’t mutually exclusive. But sometimes in the obsession with weight loss, we lose touch with our messy, wild, weird, mushy, mysterious selves. We smooth out all of our spikes and push down all of the voices and whispers and cries and deepest yearnings from inside.

And I don’t want that for any of us.

Sunday PSA

Just wanted to send you a Sunday PSA: You’re not going to do this perfectly.

You’re not going to do this eating thing perfectly. Or this life thing.

Ever.

So cut yourself some slack, okay? Maybe just enjoy the messy ride.

Guess what? Your food problem isn't really about food.

Your food problem isn’t about food.

And it’s not about eating, or the fact that you need more willpower around Krispy Kremes.

It’s everything else.

I know that can be hard to hear.

If it was about food, then you could just find the perfect diet, and everything would be fixed.

But your food problem isn’t about food.

And until you figure out what is going on with the Everything Else that’s causing you to have a Food Problem, you will always have a food problem.

What is going on with your relationships?

With your career?

With your feelings about ambition, about authenticity, about success, about your story of who you “should” be in the world, and who you actually are?

With your family and their expectations, with your friends and their needs?

What is going on with how you spend your day and how you’d like to spend your morning, evening, and night?

Let me say this another way:

Are you dressing, moving, talking, laughing, loving, walking, sleeping, working, thinking and striving in a way that expresses your deepest, most truthful self?

One of my deepest beliefs is that food problems are barely about food at all. They are much more a sign that our lives are not in alignment.

Sure, there are practices that we need to do to examine our eating more closely (like eating when we’re hungry, stopping when we’re full, and eating without distractions), but really, the point of those practices is that they are the warning bell.

If we’re eating when we’re not hungry, something else is going on.

If we’re eating past fullness, something else is going on.

If we always need to be distracted, something else is going on.

So if you find it abhorrently uncomfortable even to contemplate not reading or going on your phone while you eat lunch, you have to figure out what’s up.

Is it uncomfortable to think of eating without distractions because you never get any time to yourself and this is your time to relax and have fun?

Or because when you put down your distractions, all kinds of thoughts and feelings come up that are completely overwhelming?

Or because you feel really awkward eating without distractions because nobody else at your office does?

Whatever your answer, it gives you a treasure chest of information about how you spend your day, how you deal with feelings and thoughts, and what your relationship is to your job.

You might need more time to relax.

You might need to deeply investigate your thoughts.

You might need to re-evaluate what you want out of your job.

I am extremely, intensely, passionately interested in this.

I am extremely, intensely, passionately interested in your deepest truth, your wants and needs and desires and everything you hate but think you should love.

I’m not particularly interested in dieting, or a perfect 10-step system for weight loss management.

But I am extremely interested in using food as a lens to understand core, essential insights about what we do and do not want from life.  

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Here's the deal: this 'untangling what is actually, really causing your eating issues' ? It's really hard to do. 

Really, really hard to do.

Here at the Dessert Club, we've found that it's much easier to do with help. With the support of others, and a group leader, and a curriculum, books to read, and specific practices. It's easier to do it in bite-sized pieces, so you don't get overwhelmed and can slowly build up your skills. 

Because you can do it. So many of our past participants can attest to that. (Read more about their stories here).

So if you want to get started, join a group, friend :)

You can't solve eating issues without solving body image issues.

You have food problems because you have body image problems.

I’m sorry, but I have to say it.
In fact, this is a waaaay overdue message from me to you.

You know how you can’t control yourself around Nutella?
Or cereal?
Or mac and cheese?
Or tortilla chips?
Or peanut butter?

It’s because, on some level, you feel deeply convinced that your body must look a certain way.

I mean, think about it. If you didn’t need your body to look a certain way…

If it was utterly unimportant to you exactly what you weighed, or exactly what size jeans you fit into…

If you felt totally and completely confident that regardless of what shape your body happened to be, you would be loved and cherished, admired and valued, that you would be successful in work and school, make great friendships and have fantastic romantic relationships….

Would it particularly matter what you ate?

I mean, of course it would still matter what you ate. You would still get hungry, and when that happened, you would feed yourself food that made you feel good (in all senses of the word). You might sometimes even (gasp!) eat when you weren’t hungry, because we are sensual beings who enjoy food.

But as long as you felt pretty good in your body, you probably wouldn’t worry about it too much.

And if you stopped feeling good in your body? If you ate nothing but Cheetos and donuts for dinner one day? Well, then the next day you’d probably eat lightly and move your body so that you…oh, I don’t know, FELT BETTER.

Of course, you may be objecting: it’s not that I want to be thin, Katie. I just want to be healthy!

To which I would respond:

Of course, health does matter. But we can be healthy at a far wider range of weights than most of us “want” to be. And though health and weight are related, you can significantly improve your health without losing any weight.

Yes, it is true that at some weights your risk of certain diseases may increase. But you are not de facto unhealthy because you are at a certain weight. For example, some research suggests that health is determined more by activity level than by weight, even for obese people.

Let me say it again: You can be within a relatively wide range of weights and still be healthy.

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You know what I think? I think that “I’m afraid of gaining weight/I want to lose weight so I can be healthy” is smoke and mirrors, for many of us.

It’s a way of having a reasonable justification for our obsession with “not getting fat.”

Look, I’m not going to say that I don’t get why you do it.

In fact, I do it too.

I mean, everything we see or hear or read or click on implies that beauty and success and force of character and happiness means being thin. I’m not going to say that there isn’t discrimination against heavier people.

Everything we consume tells us that everything we could possibly want in life would be put in jeopardy if we were fat. And we believe it.

But the sad, horrible, terrible, ironic, thing about this is that in our attempt not to gain weight….we end up gaining weight.

We ignore our hunger signals and eat too little. We lose weight.

Then we eat way too much. And gain the weight back. And then some.

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So let me be clear: I’m not trying to encourage you to be "overweight" or “fat” or unhealthy. Far from it.

What I want is for you to look closely at your deeper motives.

You might think that the problem is your eating. And it’s true — if you are reading this blog, you probably have some sort of eating “problem.” I spend a lot of time on this blog offering you solutions for how to “fix” your eating problem — by learning how to listen to your body’s signals and eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full and respect its cravings.

But you want to know the deep, dark, ugly truth?

As long as you are not okay with your body, you will probably have a food problem.

So what do we do about that? Well, that is a BIG question. Stay tuned. I'll be posting a lot about this in the coming weeks.

Or for more practical ideas right away, you could sign up for the Dessert Club.

In the meantime, let me know what you think in the comments. Do you struggle with being afraid of “getting fat”? Do you feel obsessed with being a certain weight? What would your eating look like if you could let go of those fears?

Do the Next Right Thing

Here is my loving, caring, gentle invitation for you this week:

Do the Next Right Thing.

You know that one thing you’ve been putting off? The one that seems to have nothing to do with anything?

Cleaning your bathtub.
Buying a new hair product.
Dealing with your bank account.
Telling a friend “no.” Or “yes.”
Donating those shoes that aren’t technically worn out but you never seem to wear and are a drain on your mental energy.

Do it. 
Even if it seems random. Even if it doesn’t actually fix one of the "big problems" in your life.

You might be frustrated with your romantic life but have this deep sense that you need to finally freaking replace that shower curtain or deal with your retirement account.

You might feel totally stuck and lost in your career but feel this deep urge to put a platinum blonde streak in your hair.

And here’s the kicker: it will help you if you just do those random things.

Replace that shower curtain.
Re-allocate your retirement account.
Get those blonde highlights.
Just do whatever it is that you need to do next.

I really, really, mean this.

Because guess what happens when you move forward on one front? You move forward in your life. You feel a sense of momentum, a sense of trust in your ability to care for yourself.

And when you have a sense of momentum and trust?

Then you move forward in other ways.
And in more ways after that.

And each, weird, seemingly random step gives you odd, unexpected insight on where to go next.

Here’s one way that this played out for me. A few years ago, I felt extremely lost in almost every area of my life—career, romantic relationships, my social life, and more. I had some inklings about what to do about it, but nothing was totally clear. I only knew one thing for sure: I really wanted to shave my head.

Shaving my head was totally random. It didn’t seem like it would solve the big questions: What am I doing with my life? How am I going to make money? How can I take care of myself while caring for other people? How can I connect with people?

Except it was the only thing that I was totally clear on.

So, you know what, I decided to do it. (More on that here).

Did shaving my head instantly solve every problem in my life? No. But it did un-block me. Once my head was shaved, I looked for other areas of my life that I felt like I needed to deal with. And sometimes they were easy (draw a picture, buy a book, try a new lipstick), and sometimes they were freaking hard (move to a new apartment then a new state, renegotiate close relationships, find a job and then quit that job and start a business). 

But there was this consistent, clear, iterative sense of “just do the next right thing,” driving all of it.

And you know what? Big, big, BIG changes happened for me.

If you are someone who thinks you need a big huge plan to “solve” your career, relationships, appearance, weight or whatever, I want you to hear it from me, lovingly:

You don’t need to "solve" anything. You just need to do the Next Right Thing.

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My challenge for you this week is to close this window and take a moment to get quiet and think about what your next right thing is.

It might have to do with reaching out to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, sending a thank-you note, cleaning your kitchen, or researching grad school. Or it might be baking a pie.

Figure out what it is. And then, my dear friend, take a step in the direction of doing it.

Having trouble losing weight? You're probably doing this.

You know how I wrote last week about how you should be honest with yourself about your desires and priorities? 

It’s fine to want to lose weight, but you have to decide whether losing weight is more or less important to you than health, trusting yourself around food, honoring your own hunger and fullness, eating foods your like, or feeling sane.

I mentioned something briefly that I want to emphasize today:

Even if you think you’re telling the truth about your priorities, there’s a good chance you’re still lying to yourself.

I may not be Sherlock Holmes, but I am a pretty much a Victorian-era detective when it comes to telling if people are lying to themselves about food-and-body-related issues.

Here’s my secret clue: If your actions don’t match your supposed “prioritization,” you’re probably lying to yourself.

In other words: If you “say” that you really, really want to lose weight, but you are “falling off the wagon” of your diet three times a week, then being on a diet is probably not your true top priority.

Your deepest self might want to not be so freaking hungry all the time.
Or to eat foods you enjoy.
Or to stop having to spend most of your waking moments planning your eating.
Or just to rest and enjoy life, and not feel like you need to change and do exhausting things all the time. 

Only you can know can truly want. But your behavior is a darn good clue.

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Of course, we are all complex people with many different, often-conflicting needs.

Maybe we do want to lose weight, so we try to “block out” the voices inside of us that are whining and complaining and begging to eat oreos.

But when we privilege one part of ourselves, and ignore the other parts of ourselves for months, years, or even decades, we become disjointed and stuck. One part of us gets its say all the freaking time, and the other parts of us start to get bitter and resentful and more and more determined to try to get our attention somehow. Any way it can.

Cue you eating 6-month-old sun chips standing in the kitchen where no one can see you.

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Telling yourself the truth might mean softening into the fact that all of your desires need to have a say and a seat at the table.

When “I want to lose weight” talks to “I want to eat a quesadilla” and “I am freaking tired of being hungry all the time” and “I’m so busy and this brownie is the only good thing that happened to me this week”…only then can a consensus be reached.

Telling yourself the truth also might mean acknowledging that while you truly do want to lose weight,  all of your other needs (like your needs for ice cream and and a break from the obsessing) need to have their say for a while because it’s been a long time since they had the microphone for more than a couple of furtive moments.  

Your behavior – the fact that you have never been able to stick to a diet for more than 24 hours – might have been telling you this already. It’s time that your mind caught up, and stopped pretending that “losing weight” was your top priority, when it isn’t, truly.

Here’s one way to start: sit down sometime today with a journal and ask yourself, “what do I really, truly want?” Write downeverything, a big, long, messy often-conflicting list. And then read over the list slowly, noting how to feels as you look at each ideas. Do you feel tight and nervous? Or spacious and relaxed?  There is often a tightness we feel when we think about things that we think we “should” do, but don’t really, truly want.

How have you lied to yourself, now or over the years? This can apply not only to eating, but also to relationships, career, home life, and more.

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If this type of thing is tough for you to do, you’re not alone. It's hard for all of use to wade through the layers and figure out what we really, truly want. If you’d like some help, you might want to join a Dessert Club.

On Health and Telling Yourself the Truth

"I just want to be healthier."

I hear this a lot, from Dessert Club members and people in the world. That desire to be healthier seems to motivate a lot of behaviors: running marathons, going to CrossFit classes, giving up sugar or soda or dairy or white carbohydrates.

But here’s what I often find, when I’m able to probe a bit deeper:

“I want to be healthier” is often a cover for “I want to be thinner.”

We run that marathon because hopefully we’ll get so “healthy” that we’ll lose a couple of pounds.
We want to give up sugar because hopefully we’ll get so “healthy” that our jeans will fit again. 

For the record, I think it’s fine to want to be thinner. Although I strongly object to the societal pressures that women receive to be thin, I’m not going to send the body positivity police to your door for wanting to lose some weight.

But let’s call a spade a spade. If you want to lose weight, let’s acknowledge that explicitly.

Why? Because if you’re not telling yourself the truth, you won’t be able to honestly and accurately prioritize your needs.

This “prioritization” thing matters. We all may have many different needs, and at certain points those needs may come into conflict with each other. But if you aren’t about about what you actually prioritize, you’re less likely to feel satisfied.

For example, let’s say that you want to lose weight, and you also want to be healthy. Great! But how do those two compare to each other in terms of priority? If you got much healthier by running a marathon but ended up gaining 10 pounds in the process, for example, how would you feel about it? Your answer to that question tells you a lot about your true motivations.

Or what about your desire for weight loss versus your desire to:

Trust yourself around food?
Honor your own hunger and fullness?
Eat foods you love?
Stop thinking about portions/calories/points all the time?
Go to restaurants and eat on vacation without worrying?
Feel like your weight is stable without you having to “do” anything?
Feel good in your body?

It’s worth acknowledging that it’s possible to achieve different goals simultaneously. You might feel better in your body as you get healthier, for example. But at some point, there will be trade-offs for everything. If you focus on losing weight, for example, you might need to stop eating foods you love, which might make you feel deprived and more likely to eat compulsively in the long run.

So when push comes to shove, what do you choose?

And if you’re saying that “health” is your top priority, is that really true? Or is “health” a code word for “thinness” (especially since you can be healthier without losing any weight).

Again, there’s no right answer, necessarily. But there is a truthful answer, for you.