How to Find Your Own Path Between Diet and Anti-Diet Extremes, with Elizabeth Hall

The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast

A few years back, when I took a dramatic turn from helping clients with weight loss to embracing Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size, I went head-first into anti-diet culture.

I mean head....first....

I was emphatic about how weight loss cannot and should not ever be the goal. I informed potential clients that I was not going to focus on weight loss. And I told my current clients that we were shifting gears because what we were doing was harmful.

And yes, I still believe in all of that.

But...

What I wasn't realizing was that I was just as extreme on the anti-diet side as those who were on the diet side.

I was just as emphatic about not focusing on weight loss as they were about promoting It. I was citing research that supported my view while criticizing them for doing the same. I thought of them as being one-sided and myopic while I was doing the exact same thing.

And you know what? Being that extreme on the anti-diet side didn't work. Yes, they made huge strides in their relationships with food. They weren't bingeing, their emotional eating had significantly declined, and they were feeling much more at peace with food.

But they were still uncomfortable in their bodies, both physically and emotionally. For many of my clients, it was hard to move, hard to walk, hard to be intimate with their partners. I heard a lot of clients say, "I just don't feel good."

That's totally valid. And for me to say "well, the research between weight and health is correlational. It doesn't definitively show that weight causes health issues" was just downright dismissive and insulting.

And of course, we all still live in a world that's unaccepting and marginalizing of large bodies. Of course that has an impact on all of us and leads to a desire for weight loss. Of course it does.

Thankfully, I began to realize that I couldn't stay that entrenched on the extreme anti-diet side, just as I couldn't continue to work on weight loss. Extremes don't work. It was time to find some kind of grey area.

And this grey is what we're talking about on this week's podcast! In my latest episode, I'm joined by Elizabeth Hall, an ICF Certified Mind-Body Eating and Intuitive Wellness Coach who helps people recover from years of chronic dieting and emotional eating by reconnecting to their inner wisdom. Her work allows people to explore and redefine health and well-being from a place of compassion and non-judgment so they can learn to trust their bodies again.

Elizabeth came onto the podcast to chat with me about the extremes of diet and anti-diet culture and the need to find what works for you, and I'm so thankful to her. She has a long history on both sides of the issue, and talks very eloquently about how she's been working toward a middle ground. It was such a helpful discussion to me, and I hope it will be for you too.

Elizabeth also emphasizes how amazing out bodies are, and how we really just need to get out of their way. I love this quote from her:

"Your body will take care of itself. Your body knows what to do."

She also reminds us that "taking care of the body is a gift." I couldn't agree more!

So if you've been feeling as though you have to pick a side, check out this really important episode!

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