Can You Be A Non-Dieter?

I’d like to talk today about my Non-Diet Approach.

Non-diet approach? What the heck is that?

Quite simply, it means that when we work together to attain your health goals we do so without a focus on what the scale tells you.  It means an approach to health that is meaningful to you—regardless of the size of your body.

“But wait!” I can hear you exclaiming while throwing your hands in the air.  “Aren’t you a Dietitian-Nutritionist? Isn’t that the whole purpose of what you do? To put me on a diet and help me lose weight?”

Full disclosure here—I used to think that’s what I was supposed to do. 

Even just a few years ago, I was creating diet plans for clients and helping them lose weight. The focus wasn’t on healthy living or creating sustainable habits — it was simply to drop a few inches, lose a few pounds, and get skinnier, NOW! 

Guess what the success rate was in helping them lose weight and — pay attention —keep it off?  Pretty close to a big ol’ 0%. In almost every instance my clients put the weight back on. Most of the time it was because they were focusing on weight loss and nothing else. And when the tricks you do to drop a few pounds stop working, and I promise they always do, most people go in the other direction and regain the weight they lose—and then some. 

Needless to say…when this happened, not only did I feel like I was a failure, but the worst part was that THEY came back to me feeling like they let me down. That they were the ones that failed—“they" weren’t disciplined enough, they didn’t have enough willpower, or they weren’t committed enough.   

And truthfully—that just didn’t sit well with me. That didn’t seem right. 

So I’m calling bulls*^t on that nonsense.

I knew from my own struggles with weight loss and disordered eating the diets don’t work and cause more harm than good.  After all, look what they had done to me (nothing good, trust me). I was giving people what they thought they needed, and what I was taught to do in school. And everyone was miserable.

After a lot of my own personal soul-searching and eating disorder recovery, I now call myself a very proud weight-neutral, anti-diet dietitian. That means that when I work with a client we focus on attainable health behaviors without a focus on weight loss.  I wish you could see my clients’ faces when I tell them we are going to put the weight loss on the back burner when working together.  Sometimes it’s fear, or confusion, but most of the time it is relief.  

I realize that my approach isn’t for everyone, and it’s actually pretty radical in a sea of weight loss apps and those before/after photos in your social media.  But this is what I profoundly believe in to my very core. And I hope you’ll join me on this journey and open to your mind about health without a focus on weight.