I have a new favorite word. Undiet. The short definition? It’s the key to improving your relationship with food by ditching diets after 40. Here’s the longer definition.
Of course, you’ve heard of diet(ing) and maybe you’ve heard of anti-diet and non-diet – I’ve used both in my nutrition counseling practice.
But what about undiet?
I was introduced to the term by my friend and colleague Dr. Jenn Salib Huber RD ND who’s been a guest on the Savor Food and Body Podcast twice now. And the term resonated with me deeply.
I’ll be honest I’m not a very anti-anything person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely against diets to lose weight. But the prefix anti- feels like putting up strong hands ready for a fight.
While I’m all for a good fight against weight stigma and fat-phobia that create the need (pressure) for women to conform to thin-beauty-health ideals – ideals that were created by some white guys, I’m even more passionate about the what now…what happens the day after the fight.
I realized in the ten-plus years I’ve worked as a nutrition counselor and intuitive eating specialist (and now as a woman in midlife), the morning after the fight is more important than the fight itself.
The morning after is when you dust yourself off, shake off the excess stress hormones, and get on with your life in a way that hopefully feels inspiring, more productive, and aligned with your goals and values. It’s also scary as hell.
This is what undieting means. It’s the morning after ending the fight with diet culture. After years of food rules, weight loss programs, you’re ready to fight the good fight against weight stigma, fat-phobia, and the thin-beauty-wellness ideal.
Undieting is an unraveling, an unnerving, and upheaval of everything you thought was true about health and worthiness as a woman.
It’s unlearning. It’s throwing out the scale, diet-related books and cookbooks, ditching the skinny clothes you hope to get back into one day. It might even be the unraveling of friendships that don’t serve you anymore.
You know, the friend who starts talking about why she can eat the pastry with her coffee today because it’s her “off” day (formerly known as a cheat day but nobody wanted to be caught cheating).
Undieting is the what now after you’ve picked yourself up from dieting rock bottom and felt the freedom that comes from knowing you can eat whatever you want. You don’t have to exercise if you don’t want to. And you don’t have to keep up with Kardashian fashion trends ever again.
Undieting starts out as a state of euphoria and flows through a handful of stages.
- Unraveling
- Fuckit eating and exercise resistance
- Body grief
- Unlearning and relearning
- Wellness without obsession
- Practice
Unraveling includes becoming aware of how diet culture messaging has affected you since at least puberty and maybe even before that.
Based on the Principles of Intuitive Eating, the first principle Reject the Diet Mentality, is about clarity. It’s meant to increase your awareness of how diet culture messages show up in your day-to-day life, where they hide, and how they can show up in safe places. This feels like the finger-pointing, but really it’s meant to be about learning how to take care of yourself in spite of the messages you received.
Fuckit eating and exercise resistance – This is the honeymoon period with food you’ve been craving since you went on your first diet.
It’s where you learn to make peace with food and realize you don’t have to earn or burn calories with exercise.
Body grief is the term used by my friend and colleague Brianna Campos LMHC to describe when you see your body change after letting go of rigid rules around food and exercise (or as one of the symptoms of perimenopause). You start to mourn the body you once had and you work towards body acceptance.
Unlearning and relearning involves letting go of beliefs about what healthy eating is and why it’s important to you. It means reframing thoughts like you shouldn’t be eating this to asking yourself what you actually want to eat.
It’s about learning how to trust and honor your physical and emotional hunger before you get to the bottom of the carton of ice cream or bag of tortilla chips.
This is the stage where you learn to slow down and stop multi-tasking while you eat. To practice a sense of mindfulness so you can learn what you like and don’t like about the food you’re eating. Mindfulness is the key to greater satisfaction with the eating.
Unlearning and relearning are the heart of undieting. It’s the stage you learn more about yourself and learn to trust your body. It’s where you start to realize the most important relationship you’ll ever have in life is with your body.
For women in perimenopause, this is the stage you start to connect the dots between symptoms like anxiety, difficulty sleeping, meno-moods, dizziness, and what you eat or how you move your body.
Wellness without obsession is the stage where body acceptance and gentle nutrition, two of the later Principles of Intuitive Eating, take shape.
You’ve done the unraveling, made created a personalized definition of health, and have started find peace with food and your body. You become more confident about why you’ll never go back to dieting. Why you don’t need to pay (literally) into diet culture BS with your time, money, or energy. You let go of prescriptive eating and intense exercise. You feel more free, confident, and in control of knowing what, when, and how you want to eat and move your body.
Practice. You don’t arrive at body acceptance and wellness without obsession by doing Intuitive Eating. Life throws curve balls. Life has hard moments and seasons (hello perimenopause symptoms).
Working through these stages of intuitive eating teaches you life-long skills to practice. Whenever life gets hard or life is going great, you practice.
Just like an athlete practices their sport. A musician practices their instrument. You practice intuitive eating, mindfulness, and self-compassion.
Living an undiet life is an ongoing practice, one that can feel effortless at times and like you’re back to the fight again at other times. This is why it can be helpful to work with professionals who specialize in Intuitive Eating, women’s physical and mental health, perimenopause and menopause, and even life coaching – whatever it takes to give you support through the unraveling, unlearning, and relearning.
If you’re curious to learn more about how to undiet your life or where to even start, here are some resources to help you move forward from the fight against diet culture and toward making peace with food and your body.
Wonder if you have an unhealthy relationship with food? Take the quiz!
The Savor Food and Body Podcast
Books
- Intuitive Eating Book
- Intuitive Eating Workbook
- Body Respect
- The Body is Not An Apology
- Embody
- Body Kindness
- Intuitive Eating Guide to Recovery
You can find all of these books* on the Savor Food and Body bookshop.org site.
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