Caroline Dooner

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.

In response to Nicole Arbour's fat shaming video. . .

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.

For years I felt ashamed for having a body. Embarrassed to have big boobs. Embarrassed to be anything but tiny and perfect. Embarrassed to be anything bigger than a dainty wisp of air. I felt like taking up physical space in this world was both vulnerable and too powerful.

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?

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.

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.”

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

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.

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!