Rejecting the Diet Mentality: Embracing Freedom with Intuitive Eating
- Lola Thomson
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Intuitive Eating Series: A therapist’s perspective on rebuilding body trust, one principle at a time.
This article is part of my Intuitive Eating Series, where I share insights from both my clinical work and personal experience with healing my relationship with food. Each piece explores one of the ten principles of intuitive eating through a therapeutic and compassionate lens — helping you move away from diet culture, reconnect with your body’s wisdom, and find peace with food.
I spent years of my life chasing the illusion that if I could just find the right plan, the perfect balance, or the ideal weight, I would finally feel confident, calm, and free in my body. The problem wasn’t a lack of discipline — it was the belief that my worth depended on control.
The diet mentality thrives on this belief. It tells us that thinness equals happiness and that our bodies must be managed, corrected, or fixed to be acceptable. It whispers that food is something to be feared, measured, or earned — and when we inevitably “fail,” it offers only shame in return.
As a psychotherapist and as a woman who has lived through that cycle, I can tell you: the diet mentality is not a mindset of health — it’s a mindset of disconnection.
The Trap of Diet Culture
Diet culture is seductive because it promises certainty. It gives you rules to follow and a sense of control in a world that often feels unpredictable. But those rules come at a cost. They disconnect you from your body’s cues, your pleasure, and your intuition.
Each time you ignore your hunger, skip the foods you love, or tell yourself you’ve “been bad,” you reinforce the idea that your body can’t be trusted. Over time, this leads to guilt, shame, and a sense of failure that becomes deeply internalized.
Rejecting the diet mentality means seeing through that illusion — recognizing that diets don’t work long-term and that they often lead to greater weight fluctuation, stress, and emotional distress. More importantly, it’s about reclaiming your autonomy and remembering that your body is not the problem.
Reclaiming Trust and Freedom
When you let go of diet rules, you make space for something much more meaningful: trust. Intuitive eating invites you to reconnect with your internal wisdom — to eat in response to your body’s hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues rather than external “shoulds.”
This doesn’t mean giving up on health. It means redefining it. True health is not about restriction; it’s about relationship — the one you have with your body, your mind, and your food. When you eat from a place of self-respect and curiosity rather than control, your body naturally finds balance.
For me, this shift began when I stopped labeling food as “good” or “bad.” I started asking: What do I really need right now? Sometimes the answer was a crisp salad. Other times it was warm bread with butter. Both could be nourishing, both could be enough.
A Radical Act of Self-Love
Rejecting the diet mentality is more than a nutritional choice — it’s a radical act of self-love and self-empowerment. It’s about honoring your body’s inherent worth and refusing to let external ideals dictate how you feel about yourself.
When you stop seeing your body as a project to be perfected and start treating it as a partner to be cared for, everything changes. Food becomes a source of connection and joy. Your body becomes a home, not a battleground.
This is the second post in my Intuitive Eating Series, exploring the principles that help us rebuild trust and compassion with our bodies.
If you’re ready to step away from diet culture and begin reconnecting with your body’s natural wisdom, reach out — I’d love to help you find freedom through intuitive eating.