Caroline Dooner

It’s that time of year when everyone is obsessed with not eating too much food. It’s like a cultural rite of passage: Will you complain about how much food you’re eating this holiday? Will you discuss how bad you’ve been and how you plan on repenting come January 1st?

You can improve your health without losing weight!

These are two concepts that I think we are all a little confused about. Even writing on this topic for four years, it’s taken me time to master explaining the difference between emotional eating and bingeing. We often use those two terms as if they’re interchangeable. But they’re absolutely not the same thing!

The truth is, your body does not want you to restrict your food, and it does not want you to lose weight, especially when it feels like food is scarce. So, your body will sabotage your efforts almost every time — while also making it harder and harder to lose weight the more 'famines' you put it through.

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.

Our culture has decided that gaining weight is the worst thing ever. And we have gotten the message in a multitude of sneaky or super blatant ways.

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.

I never used to think my eating or weight fixation was that weird...I just thought I was a health nut.

I'm an anti-diet teacher. I teach chronic, obsessed dieters how to eat normally, trust their bodies, and fully commit to living their lives now, not 30 pounds from now.

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.