Caroline Dooner

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?

We haven’t quite escaped the influence of the Puritans yet...We still tend to regard our bodies, our eating, our desires, and anything else of this earth as “bad,” “weak,” or “sinful.”

We are taught that cravings equal unhealthy and no cravings equal healthy. But guess what? I am here to tell you that you will never get rid of your cravings, and that it’s fully OK!

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

You can improve your health without losing weight!

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.

I have a confession: Until recently, I didn’t even know what “patriarchal society” meant. Yeah, I’m one of those feminists who grew up believing I didn’t need feminism.

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 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.