Caroline Dooner

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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."

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?

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.

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.”

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!

I’ve heard this so many times: “Your talk of normal eating and body love is all good and fine — but I need to lose weight.” This is what I have to say to you: You don’t.