This was a defining moment in my life because it was the start of my non diet journey. I never for one moment realized quite how life-changing this would be.

In many ways, it was like taking life as I knew it and turning it upside down and inside out and changing every rule I'd lived by for years.

When I had this aha moment - I belonged to a group of people who only felt safe and in control when we had some plan of what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. All I could focus on was:

• how much I feared food
• the guilt I felt with every morsel that went into my mouth,
• how much I hated my body and
• what a failure I apparently was because I had “no willpower”.

Choosing a non diet lifestyle was completely opposite to all these things.

That’s where all my life’s energy was focussed, and I’d never noticed it before. What a ridiculous waste of a wonderful life!

For years I'd believed I was powerless against fat and food. I'd used diets to give me the illusion of happiness and of being in control. Any time anyone commented that I'd lost weight, I had a pleasure rush that hooked me.

With the help of all my yo-yo dieting, I’d lost my sense of self, my drive, my passion and my purpose. My non diet journey would land up leading me back to all these things! Yay!

On that day, I vowed to listen to - and trust - my body to tell me what it needed. It was scary, but it was also liberating, challenging, exciting and empowering.

When I let go of food, it let go of me. The process of connecting to my inner wisdom was empowering. The journey ironically landed up helping me feel as if I was in control, rather than that food was controlling me.

Who would ever have believed that? It was such a miracle!!! Incredibly, food became a source of pleasure rather than of pain and shame. Everything I'd believed about dieting was turning out to be false.

When I started on the non diet path, I also gave up on the idea of losing weight. Instead I decided to focus on gaining emotional and physical health. So, imagine my amazement, when, without even trying to lose weight, my body did gradually slim down. And when I found ways to enjoy exercise it also became more toned.

And no, as you can see from this photo, my body isn't the insurance ideal, or any other goal weight - it's just the size my body stays at comfortably without effort. I have no idea what I weigh - along with ditching diets, I ditched my scale a long time ago.

Whatever my weight is, it's a weight at which I: feel healthy, have loads of energy and feel at home in my own skin.

Non diet research

In their book, ‘When Women stop hating their bodies’, Hirchmann and Munter discuss research with 87 'obese' women who took part in 10 group sessions and focussed on:

• eating for hunger instead of restrictive dieting;
• body-acceptance regardless of size;
• and coping mechanisms for handling emotional distress.

While there were only relatively small weight losses, there were significant improvements in eating attitudes, body image, self-image, depression and self-esteem which were maintained at the two-year follow up when more weight had also been shed.

Participants answered ‘very true’ to a questionnaire before and after (the 'after 2 years figures are in brackets) following this anti-diet approach:

My weight fluctuates: 34% (18%...a 16% improvement)
I feel controlled by food: 73% (27%...a 46% improvement)
I eat when not hungry: 84% (32%...a 52% improvement)
I’m ashamed of my eating habits: 70% (25%...a 50% improvement)

Professor Linda Bacon and colleagues

Professor Bacon and her team of researchers in California followed dieters and a non-dieting group for two years.

• 92% of the non-dieting group compared to 42% of the dieting group completed the study. Doesn’t that just prove how unsustainable diets are?

• Dieters initially lost 5.2% of their weight but regained almost all of it back by the end of the two-year study period. Non-dieters’ weight stayed the same throughout the study.

• Non-dieters demonstrated significant improvements in self-esteem and depression by the end the study, while dieters’ self-esteem levels had worsened.

The non diet Mind over Fatter approach

I have learned to accept my body. I eat for hunger more often than not. I know that sometimes when I feel hungry I’m actually thirsty. I appreciate food more – its taste, texture, smell, etc. I am more confident eating in front of others. I am kinder to myself in a myriad of ways. I have found a new family in the group I undertook the journey with. I have been reintroduced to some of my strengths.

… the fact that I’ve overcome choc-o-holism should be a great example to anyone.

I don’t even read the diet articles in magazines anymore… I’ve been released from all this nonsense.

I am delighted with the result. I have bid my excess weight a loving goodbye.I would never have believed that being kind and loving to myself would make such a difference.

I’m even enjoying doing exercise. I never thought that would happen.

After fighting bulimia for 23 years, I’ve smashed it to smithereens.

Food used to occupy all my thinking, now I have more important things do.

What the non diet Mind over Fatter programme strives for

• were no longer pre-occupied with food,
• no longer thought of yourself as a failure who has no willpower,
• no longer had to deprive and restrict yourself,
• discovered healthier ways to take care of your emotional hungers
• became more relaxed about your body,
• no longer had the bathroom scale affect your day,
• start to find doing exercise natural and enjoyable,
• start to love yourself more,
• feel free and liberated from food and body worry
• feel more impassioned and purposeful about your life?

If you would, then the Mind Over Fatter road-map will probably work for you.

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