Unpacking Diet VS Non-Diet Approaches to Health

A Little Background

When I first began my coaching, I deemed myself an “intuitive eating coach who promoted body positivity and functioned from the Health at Every Size paradigm.

What this really meant is that I was done with dieting, angry with diet culture and wanting to save every person I knew from spending another minute hating themselves based on someone else’s idea of what was good for them.

Parts of this are still very much true, and yet I’ve also continued to expand and transform in my own relationship with food and body.  

One thing I learned was that being angry was not supporting me.  

Being dogmatic and black and white about non-dieting was no different than being dogmatic and black and white about dieting.

In this post, I’ll share with you my current views on what diet and non-diet mean to me.

My current passion is exploring how to show up as my true and authentic self in everything I do and how to support others in doing the same. I still don’t want you to spend another minute hating yourself but I also know your path out of suffering will be uniquely your own.  There are no right or wrong components.

Confused by Competing Dogmas? Making Sense of Diet VS Non-Diet Approaches to Wellness

You may hear people say they are approaching life, health or even weight concerns from a “non-diet approach”.

Hmmmm - what exactly does that mean?

First, let’s start with some definitions. “Diet” as defined by Oxford languages means “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats”.

That’s it. There is no moral judgment around it and there are no rules. It’s simply - what you eat.

However, the verb definition of diet from Oxford languages is “restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight”.  This is the kind of diet that most of us think of when people talk about diets. For example, most people will say “I’m on a diet.” Well yeah, everyone is on a diet.  But a diet of what?

What they usually mean is “I’m restricting calories in order to lose weight.”

As for the term “non-diet”, this had been taken to mean that a person is not following any kind of plan, there is no restriction and there are no rules regulating their eating patterns. Non-diet focuses on overall health and well-being, rather than weight. It's based on the idea that health is not determined by weight or body size, but by a person's overall well-being, including their physical, mental, and emotional health.

This is a beautiful and holistic way of approaching our relationship with food and body.

However, just like diet culture, proponents of the non-diet approach make assumptions that may not be helpful in the end.  Let’s try to avoid assumptions shall we?

Stepping on the Non-Diet Path

In 2013 I stopped my quest to restrict calories in order to lose weight. That’s when I learned all about diet culture and how my upbringing had been steeped in it. Diet culture is the conditioned and programmed cultural message about food, weight, and health that focuses on thinness as an ideal, and labels foods and behaviors as either “good” or “bad.”

That is the part of “diet” that is exhausting. It’s not necessarily the food part, it’s the shame, blame, guilt, judgment, mental torture, fear and obsession that goes along with diet culture.

What happened next for me is that I conflated dieting with diet culture. So any attempt to modify my food intake became “diet culture” in my mind and that was a destructive no-no.

I threw the baby out with the bathwater. In an effort to call nothing good or bad, I ate everything. In an effort to be “intuitive”, I ate everything. I questioned nothing and I was definitely not listening to my body.  How could I be? I’d been overriding it’s signals for 30 years of chronic dieting.

This was a necessary part of healing, but I wish I had more awareness of what I was really being asked to learn. (Spoiler alert: what I was being asked to learn was how to find my own truth and not follow ANY paradigms, even well meaning ones.)

Along the way, I was also being exposed to a new way of thinking that challenged my conditioning and cultural programming. Intuitive eating, body positivity and Health at Every Size became my passions.

I also learned that my health comes from so many different sources. Sleep, hydration, stress, emotional intelligence, spirituality, energy, beliefs, past trauma, our environment and many other factors impact our well being . I learned that it’s a myopic view to only see health in terms of weight and to only choose what I eat based on calorie restriction.

I was definitely a convert to the non-diet way of life.

Finding the Middle Ground

However, I soon discovered that while I was fighting against a weight centric paradigm, I was also not listening to my own body and what it needed.

I realized that “fighting” against anything was going to be a losing battle. What I needed was to turn towards love AND detach from the outcome.

These are two major spiritual principles that have guided me all along the way.

What this meant to me was I was not going to support the weight centric paradigm when it came to the shame, blame, guilt, judgment, thin ideal and mental torture. These are lower vibrational energies and were never going to bring me peace and harmony.

What I needed, was to know my worthiness, trust my body and make choices out of love.

I also needed to learn that while my worthiness did not vary with the scale, weight can sometimes be a concern or a symptom that the body needs attention (rapid or unusual weight loss or weight gain can both be a signal of disharmony.)

So when it comes to “diet”, I don’t believe in limiting calories or going hungry. I also don’t believe you have to be a certain size, weight or shape to be happy. But I do believe that therapeutic “diets” (i.e. ways of eating) and experimenting with your way of eating until you find the sweet spot that makes you feel optimal, is AOK.

I don’t bristle at the term “diet” anymore, and I don’t think people who talk about weight loss are evil. (Some people thrive when they GAIN weight as the path to health and wellness, but talking about weight loss in the same way has become a no-no for some reason.) You can check out my interview with Eliza Kingsford on the summit where we go into this paradox in depth.

When it comes to non-diet, I am in love with the way this practice expands the field of wellness. It brings into perspective the multitude of factors that can be impacting your health that go beyond food.

It invites curiosity and experimentation. It moves away from all or nothing thinking. It embraces nuance and unlimited possibilities. Our bodies are fluid and dynamic. We have all kinds of seasons of change. They are complex and incredible creatures.

Ultimately, the approach that works the best for well being that has been emerging for me over the past 5 years is the glorious land of BOTH/AND. When it comes to my health and wellness, I take a non-diet approach and consider my sleep, emotional health, hydration, stress levels, spiritual growth, beliefs, energetic blocks, nervous system regulation, trauma healing and more.

I also experiment with different ways of eating, occasionally have “guardrails”, use therapeutic diets and yes, I sometimes choose not to eat certain foods if they don’t make me feel good.

In the personal paradigm I created for me, I welcome dietary changes if it means a move towards wellness on my own healing journey. If it feels light and in alignment - then I am going to choose whatever makes my body feel good, even if someone else would call that “restrictive” or “deprivation.”

(I debated this with Roni Davis on one of the summit interviews. I used the term “guardrails” to describe my choices and she didn’t like it. But that’s the thing - if that is what makes me feel my best, to have certain guardrails or guidelines, then that is my choice. For many people this term would not work at all and while I appreciate supporting people moving away from structure, some people thrive with structure.)

You get to choose whatever makes YOU feel your best.

A non-diet approach is great, but what we eat (i.e. our diet) is tremendously important to our well being too and if we aren’t in harmony with how our bodies are functioning, it can be a relevant piece to look at.  Incorporating a particular diet doesn’t have to have anything to do with weight at all.

Conclusions

If it looks like I’m advocating for weight loss under the guise of “health and wellness”; on a certain level, I am. I’m advocating that it CAN be part of someone’s healing trajectory, (weight gain can be too). Because for some people it IS part of the journey. It just doesn’t come from starving oneself, incorporating unsafe and unsustainable habits or from fear and self-loathing.  

Weight is also not the point. Freedom, joy, ease and feeling great is.

There are dozens of factors that will affect your weight and also many choices you can make that will support your health whether your weight changes or not.

What I am really advocating is awareness and self-compassion so you can discern if your journey is being guided by diet culture and your cultural programs, or by self-love and your body.  I’m also advocating open and curious conversations so we don’t perpetuate shame and guilt when it comes to wellness.

In my case, my blood labs, gut health and hormonal issues were key indicators that something was off in my body. Not to mention chronic pain, inflammation, fatigue and yes - both weight loss and weight gain. The body speaks to us in many ways!

While my non-diet approaches were incredibly healing and supportive, I also had to pay attention to the quality of the food I was putting in my body as well as the frequency.  (And by frequency I mean how often I ate it plus how nourishing it was. Was I eating with love what was prepared with love as Maureen Whitehouse would say?) I also needed to stay open to my body’s wisdom and notice if it was particularly sensitive to certain foods over others.

There is a big difference between restricting calories to try to lose weight to prove your worth, and feeding yourself well with intention and compassion to feel in harmony.

Your health journey is not about controlling and micromanaging your habits from fear to match a picture in your mind. It’s about honoring and allowing choices from love that embody the light and the joy in your heart.

And to be clear, there are as many views on this topic as there are people with bodies. What has been my truth, from  my experience and for my purposes may not be yours.

I invite you to stay open and find your own truth.

What has been your experience with the diet and non-diet paradigms? How did you find your middle ground? If you’d like help with this, see the links below.

Until then, may all your choices be in alignment with true health and bring you peace, joy and harmony. (And if you aren’t feeling that way, get curious before you get concerned!)

Live free,

Elizabeth Hall

Certified Professional Mind Body Eating & Intuitive Wellness Coach

P.S.: The summit recordings are still available on my website for immediate download to help with your body confidence clarity and commitment. Look under the “courses” tab.

Three Things Rocking My World This Month

• This woman. (Her book Be Your Own Healer is coming out soon. She is also a speaker on my summit!)

• This YouTube video. (Whenever I feel unwell, I listen to these videos while going to sleep. There are tons of them and they are free.)

• This Instagram Account. (What is not to love?)

Ways I Can Support You Right Now

• Click Here to get on the waitlist for my fall session of small group coaching.  Use the link to send me an email and I’ll send you more information. Previous participants have said “My biggest takeaway was community. Being seen, being heard, being witnessed. Feeling safe. All of those combined to make our time together truly amazing. I feel we mirrored each other in our compassion, as we felt compassion for our group so we began to experience compassion for ourselves.“

• My one on one practice is welcoming new clients. You can click Here to fill out an application and I will contact you to set up a free discovery call.

Who Has Your Back?

Every day I am on the lookout for what life is trying to teach me.

It’s a blessing to realize that there is purpose behind what happens in my day.  It’s not all just “stuff that is happening to me.”

This is actually one of my favorite things to do - to see how the Universe is always conspiring in my favor or in my client’s favor.

Sometimes the way we are being supported is not obvious and it may even look like the Universe is doing the exact opposite of what we want.

This weeks lesson for me came from the gym.

On Sunday, I tweaked my back doing a dumb bell dead lift.

The weights weren’t that heavy but as soon as I felt the flush of heat in my back, I knew something was off.

I finished the work out to the best of my ability, pushing myself but not hurting myself. And then I cried in frustration on the ride home.

You see, I’ve been trying really hard to get stronger at the gym. And here I was in pain and wondering if it was all worth it.

Why was the Universe sending me pain if I was trying to do something good for myself?

At first I thought maybe the message was to slow down some more. I had already slowed down A LOT over the summer, but maybe it wasn’t enough.

I was still saying yes to some things I’d like to say no to, for example.

For the rest of Sunday, I hobbled around and wondered what message the pain was trying to give me.

On Monday I realized that I had been criticizing myself at the gym for the last month or so.

I didn’t feel like I was getting stronger in the ways I wanted to. Meanwhile, my husband (who I convinced to join) was adding weights to his reps every time and getting stronger every day.

No fair! The gym was always my thing, and here I was bringing him to a gym FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER and it felt like he was blowing me away and I was getting weaker by the minute.  (Someone better Call the Wambulance!)

I also was judging myself for not being able to run faster or do some of the more difficult body weight exercises.

For a few weeks, I had been heading home in frustration more often than satisfaction at a job well done.

Believe it or not, THAT is why the Universe tweaked my back. It knew I wasn’t happy at the gym and was helping me get the hell out. It wasn’t about resting more or doing too much.

I did not have my own back! I was judging myself and comparing myself to others.
 

Right when I tweaked my back I remember looking across the gym at the trainer who was working out in front of me. (The one with the beautiful eyes.) He was facing my way and I remember thinking to myself  - “He’s looking at you - you better make this look good.”

And WHAMMO. Instant manifestation. The Universe took me out in order to help me stop feeling the pain of my own judgment.

Pretty cool huh?

I didn’t see this interpretation right away, (it’s nearly impossible at times to see our own stuff) but working with my spiritual coach Maureen helped me identify what was off. (By the way, Maureen is running her Effortless Enlightenment program in October. Stay tuned for more information in case you want to join! I just read a quote today that said, “The scientific evidence is clear that no medicine or intervention is more protective or healing for our mental health than spirituality “, and I could not agree more!)

What happened to my back made so much sense! I could see how I had been comparing to my husband and judging my own performance and instead of getting stronger at the gym, I felt weaker.

It wasn’t the gym that was making me weaker, or my body, it was my thoughts and feelings. I was destabilizing myself every time I stepped into the gym with my critical thoughts. No wonder it was my back that went out, as the back symbolizes stability and support.

I am grateful to have had this experience to see once again where my layers of judgment are hiding.

Once I saw it, I had a talk with my husband and admitted my jealousy, insecurity and comparison. That is not who I want to be. I want to support my husbands progress, not thumb my nose at him out of my own sense of unworthiness. (I’ve done that unconsciously for years and believe me, it does not build an intimate partnership. But more on that later.)

So this week I have been speaking to myself with more kindness and slowing down even more to take care of my body. I have rested and hydrated. I have used my essential oils, taken medications if it was helpful and slowly stretched my sore muscles.

I spoke with my husband and vowed to be more supportive to us both. It’s not a contest.

Meanwhile, he bought me hot packs, rubbed my back, tied my shoes and cooked me dinner. He has always wanted the best for me and I have never been able to receive that.

On Wednesday I went back to the gym. I did slow stretching while my husband lifted weights and I rode the bike gently while he and the others in the class were challenging themselves. And I felt great! I did what my body needed and kept my eyes on my own paper.

I realized that not only did I not have my own back,  I was also thumbing my nose at the Divine and not trusting it to have my back either.

That is what is truly painful - leaving yourself without support and trying to make yourself feel better by bringing others down around you. That is what we call a lose-lose in coaching and I am all for the WIN-WIN!

I’m happy and excited today to have experienced this lesson this week and released even more layers of fear and judgment. I feel lighter and freer and happier than I have in months.

I hope this story is a good example of how the Universe is always conspiring to help us and bring us what we want.  It got me out of the gym because the gym was causing me pain. But I WANT to go to the gym, so my commitment now is to be my own cheerleader and celebrate everything I do, no matter what.

When we support ourselves with compassion and unconditional love, that is when we thrive. Not when we judge, fear and try to control and micromanage our every move.

Here’s to sweet freedom and I hope you can create a taste of that in your day today as well! (Need help with that? Send me an email and let me know!)

The Body Confident Woman Virtual Summit: An Invitation to Discover Your Mind, Body, Spirit and Food Connection

Hello everyone,

I have been working on a special gift for you all fall and I’m thrilled and excited to finally be able to share it.  Whether you are on a food freedom journey, or simply want to feel more empowered as a woman in your body, I guarantee what I have created (at no cost to you) will take your relationship with your body to new levels of joy and freedom.  Read on to learn more!

Is this the year you finally make peace with food and your body and break up with your inner food critic for good?

Are you tired of wondering what to eat when you walk into the kitchen because your mind has so many judgments and opinions about what would be “healthy”?

Have you been on the diet roller coaster only to get off and hop on the non-diet freefall where you’re left more confused than ever?

Do you wonder if you will ever escape the mental food loops and weight obsession?

Do you have a hard time cultivating self-love and self-compassion for your body?

If you are afraid you will be struggling to feed yourself in a nourishing way without shame and guilt, you’ll be relieved to know you really can make peace with food, find acceptance and compassion for yourself and your body, and free up the time and energy to create a life you love without sacrificing what is most important to you… OR spending your life reading nutrition labels.

…. Uncovering the mystery of what might be getting in the way, is the first step!

That is why I am inviting you at no cost to  The Body Confident Woman Virtual Summit + Daily Gift Giveaway.

Your journey starts with understanding your body story.

With more awareness of what has brought you to this moment comes greater compassion for yourself.

Once we understand what drives our behaviors, we have more choices.
We can’t change our behavior from the same energy that created it.

This is why conventional diets fail. From an energy of discouragement and pain, a restrictive diet that someone else designed further disconnects us from our wisdom and joy. That path is bound to lead to more pain and discomfort.  

Conventional diet culture also has us striving to attain a cultural aesthetic ideal that may not allow for our natural beauty.

At the same time, non-diet culture tends to encourage letting go of all the “rules” and can send us into a tailspin of overwhelm.

What is a person to do if they simply want to have more energy, feel good in their bodies, and trust they are taking the best care of themselves that they can in each moment?

To answer these questions and more, I have curated an expert panel of industry leaders on the topic of non-diet food freedom and created an amazing experience for you.

Inside The Body Confident Woman Virtual Summit + Daily Gift Giveaway, join me and a devoted group of wayshowers who will help you to understand your food motivations, fall in love with food again, go on a spiritual quest with food as an awakening and fill your heart with love and compassion for the tender you who has always been trying to survive. They have been in your shoes and have infinite wisdom to share and the ability to model for us how to tap into our own wisdom.

This event includes pre-recorded conversations that will help you find food freedom using mindset and eating strategies that recognize we are all unique and celebrate our differences.  

It also includes Food Freedom and Body-Peace Gifts Every Single Day,

This is for you if…

• You want to make friends with your inner food critic for good.
  

• You are ready to leave restrictive diets behind or have already left them.
  

• You are curious about how to incorporate a more intuitive eating style into your life and yet you don’t want to put your health at risk with free-for-all all eating patterns.
  

• You find yourself emotionally eating or bingeing more than you would like.
  

• You want solutions to common eating issues coming from doctors, therapists and healers who have been where you are and can show you the way out.
  

• You feel lost in the sea of diet culture and nutrition and health information.
  

• You are ready to explore your food story and expand your  self-awareness around why you do what you do.  

• You want to feel more vibrant and vital, have more energy, and reclaim your power.

Having a body is not always easy. We’ve been cut off and distracted from our wisdom and knowing how to take care of our body.

That is why events like this are so valuable. When you listen in, you will feel FAR less alone and even if you grab just one gold nugget of wisdom it will be worth it because that ONE bit can be the thing that catapults you into a whole NEW level of ease, joy and freedom.

When you join us, you will learn how to have a growth mindset to address ease with food and your body. You will also be inspired to appreciate all that your incredible body does every day to keep you alive and learn how to approach your food behaviors with love.  In this event, our experienced speakers are covering:

• How to heal from bingeing and emotional eating.
  

• How to adopt a non-diet lifestyle without sacrificing physical well-being.
  

• Open and honest dialog around weight concerns.
  

• What do food and sex have in common and how you can apply teachings from one to the other?
  

• The food and body journey as a path to spiritual awakening.
  

• What is neuro-somatic intelligence and how does that help us understand our relationship with food?
  

• How can we support our mental health by improving our relationship with food?
  

Whether you are feeling extremely uncomfortable in your eating habits or just know you are spending more energy than you would like thinking about your food and your body – you will discover THE very latest mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual practices to help you deepen self-trust and develop a NOURISHING connection with food + your body, so you can transform emotional eating and endless judgment into ease, joy, clarity, and freedom!

The Body Confident Woman Virtual Summit + Daily Gift Giveawayis a transformational educational series… with no cost where you can take in these 30-40 minute podcast-style sessions easily while walking the dog, taking a hike, driving home from work, or folding the laundry.

These are pre-recorded organic, unedited, REAL, and relatable conversations that will uplift and INSPIRE you. Each conversation is a video that you can listen to on the move, or stop and watch.  

Join us here to get your ticket to The Body Confident Woman Virtual Summit + Daily Gift Giveaway:

Sign Me Up for the Summit!

... and start healing and transforming beyond what you have ever
thought is possible for you.

Open yourself up to a whole new world when you choose to live free!

Love,

Elizabeth
Certified Professional ICF Mind Body Eating & Intuitive Wellness Coach

www.elizabethhallcoaching.com

P.S. Even if you think you’ve got it all figured out… there are an infinite number of things to be learned to create more joy, ease and freedom. Perhaps your next breakthrough is right here in front of you. You already know a lot and there's always room for more expansion.

You will also get lots of practical, easy steps you can take each day to get some LIFE-GIVING momentum in your life and relationship with food again.

Join us here to get your ticket to The Body Confident Woman Virtual Summit  + Daily Gift Giveaway.  Be sure to share this with any woman you know who would also like to experience more joy, ease and freedom in mind, body and spirit this year!

Did you see Adele on Oprah?

Did you happen to catch Adele in concert last week? She did a two-hour solo concert which included an interview with Oprah.

The music was powerful and I was enraptured by her story as tears often rolled down my cheeks.

I have written about Adele before. You can read that blog post here if you are interested.

So many people want to make her story all about her weight.

As she said in her interview, the story is not about weight.

She lost some weight. And someday she might gain some weight.
What her story is really all about is the journey she took to find herself.

She left a marriage where she wasn't happy even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. She explored a troubled relationship with a father who drank. She spent time by herself and with people who love her.

And now, she is in a relationship where she said it's the first time she has loved herself first.

Loved herself first.

That is what the story is all about. Loving yourself first.

It's amazing the myriad of ways that we can find to distract us from even coming close to that. We shop, we eat, we drink, we numb.

For some reason, it seems so much easier to do that than to do the work to really set ourselves free.

That's why I love stories like Adele's because it's a great example of what we are really here to do.

We are here to find ourselves and be the most authentic version of ourselves that we can be. From there comes everything else.

Money, relationships, and health all come from us showing up as the truth of who we are. That is our only job.

I also just finished Rich Roll's book - Finding Ultra and it's the same story. This is not about a man who lost weight. It's not even really about the physical feats he has accomplished or about how he eats.

The true story is about how a man found himself and choose to live true to himself and stop pretending he was something he wasn't.

Once he uncovered and allowed who he really was, he found all kinds of greatness there as evidenced by the joy and level of engagement he now experiences on a daily basis and shares with the world in his popular podcast.

This is what this work is really all about.

In Rich's book, he also describes the training method his coach came up with to help him train for the Ultraman race that he wanted to compete in.

The training protocol was "slow down to go fast."

This is the exact same protocol that is required to find ourselves. This is not a 30 day for a new you. It's not a quick fix or a fix of any kind.

It's a discovery process. It can be painstaking. We might not even know what we are looking for. But we are never going to find it if we don't take the time to slow down and go within and start to ask the questions that are going to lead us to our answers.

Going from diet to diet is running away from the true solution to what is really bothering us. And what is really bothering us is all the ways we are pretending to be something that we aren't and we are selling ourselves short in the process.

Pretending is painful and requires lots of comforts to ease our pain.

But we don't have to suffer. We can be free.

It starts by making a choice. Am I going to keep running or am I going to turn towards myself and see what I might find? I can promise you won't be disappointed by what you discover because I already know that every single person is powerful and magnificent and capable of being and doing anything that their heart might have been wanting all this time.

Everyone has the power. Everyone is amazingly unique brilliant and gifted. And when we all let that light shine without apology, oh man, what an incredible world that would be.

There is unlimited energy that can be found when we tap into our true selves. It's available to all of us and is already within you.

Are you ready to connect to the truth of who you really are?