Eat in Peace dietitians in Camberwell, Melbourne utilise a weight inclusive, Non-Diet Approach to assist you in improving your relationship with food and your body.
Non-Diet Approach and individual, body- led and intuitively based eating
A Non-Diet Approach is a gentle approach, encompassing a range of skills, concepts and attitudes to promote health and wellbeing that don’t require weight loss or changing your body.
During consultations, we will explore your beliefs, feelings, and concerns about your weight. We work with clients to explore and gently move away from the importance that weight plays in their lives, and help them move more towards body acceptance.
Unlike typical diets, the goals of this approach are to:
- Explore the body’s ability to look after itself
- Increase trust in food to nourish our bodies
- Explore our body’s appetite signals (hunger, fullness, satisfaction)
- Decrease guilt around food and encourage a neutral view of all foods (no foods are good or bad)
- Encourage body acceptance and move away from the pursuit of weight loss
- Minimise dieting thinking and meticulous behaviours associated with dieting for example, planning of future meals or counting kilojoules or calorie intake
- Flexibility, compassion, self care
A Non-Diet Approach is an approach that allows you to build skills and confidence in your own innate ability to select appropriate foods for your body. We work together on skills to support body acceptance. A non diet approach is not another set of rules.
Words to describe the differences between a Non-Diet Approach and Dieting
| Diet paradigm | Non Diet Paradigm |
|
Inflexible Quantitative Prescriptive Rigid Perfection-seeking Good or bad foods Rules Deprivation Time-based Fear-driven Guilt-inducing Shaming Body hatred Hunger Struggle Rationalising Temptation Thought-consuming Punishing |
Flexible Accepting Welcomes all foods Intuitive Qualitative Supporting Enjoyable Life balance Appreciating Comfort Confidence Variety Freedom Natural Calm Pleasurable Kindness Nurturing Grateful Nourishing Forgiving Satisfaction Trust-building |
For an extensive list of research studies relating to intuitive based eating, the non diet approach and Health at Every Size (R), visit the website for “Intuitive Eating” here.
Health at Every Size®
Health and wellbeing is so much more than food, exercise and weight. Health also means different things to different people based on lived experience. It is a social justice movement that supports people in all bodies to live their life free from stigma and discrimination.
It supports people in all bodies to adopt habits which support their health and well-being (physical health, emotional health, psychological health, spiritual health) rather than weight control.
The Health At Every Size® Principles are:
- Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
- Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and other needs.
- Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.
- Eating for Well-being: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.
- Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.
For more information about Health at Every Size®, please click here.
Mindfulness and mindful eating
Mindful Eating is a practice which can assist people to enjoy a satisfying, healthy and enjoyable relationship with food. It is a practice that can help people break free from ‘food rules’ and begin to enjoy healthy, flexible and relaxed eating practices. Mindful eating is not a new set of rules.
Nicole has written a blog post about mindful eating for beginners here.
Click here for more information on Mindful Eating.
