Diet mentality can be devious, even when after you have decided to escape it. To finally reject the diet mentality, you need to forget about using willpower to avoid eating, obedience, feeling like a failure, good or bad food, cheat days, “clean” eating, “junk” food, calories, shame and guilt.

Using willpower to avoid eating involves avoiding your natural desires and replacing these with strict dietary rules. For instance, the desire to eat sweet things is a normal desire. So any diet that tells you not to eat any sugar-containing foods is going against your natural instincts. Intuitive Eating will help you to stop using your willpower in a negative way and to listen to your internal wisdom rather than your external signals.

Strict rules around what you can eat can trigger your rebellious side and make you do the exact opposite. Just think about a time when your parents told you not to do something. Did it make you want to do it even more? Probably yes. This just normal human behaviour, which helps to establish and protect your identity. So it is not a surprise that if you break dietary rules, you feel like a child who has disobeyed their parents’ rules.

But remember that only you can know what you would like to eat and what your physical and emotional needs are. Only you can give yourself unconditional permission to eat whatever you want to eat without feeling guilt or regret. No one else can do this for you; not your family, partner, or friends and definitely not a diet plan. If you want to eat a pizza or fancy ice cream, that is fine. There is no division between black and white categories of “good” or “bad food and there is no “right ” or “wrong” way to eat. The best way to eat is the way that works for your unique needs.