Caroline Dooner

You can improve your health without losing weight!

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."

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.

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?

But here is the secret I've learned from years of misery and failure: Food IS naturally comforting to us. And that is perfectly fine.

Food, TV, alcohol, exercise, rest, intimacy, and sex, are all perfectly acceptable, natural ways that we humans get comfort.

I’d rather do anything than talk to cab drivers (or hair dressers, or bus seat mates or… anyone). I hate small talk. I put in my earbuds and I give short polite answers when necessary.

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

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.”

Most women's magazines will have a meal plan for you to eat the right amount. Eat the amount that Eva Longoria eats. How to eat the amount Jennifer Hudson's trainer's friend's mom says she eats.

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).