Diet culture promotes harmful ideas that destroy our relationships with food and our bodies. It brainwashes us into thinking that food should be counted and measured, and that eating is devoid of pleasure. Under the laws of diet culture, our meals and our self-worth are reduced to numbers.

As the New Year rolls around, and we hear of all the ways people are resolving to eat or exercise differently, there’s one object that is the biggest source of anxiety and terror: Your scale. But here’s the thing: a scale is just a scale. It just measures your relationship to gravity in one moment in time. To make 2019 the year of your recovery from diet culture, it’s time to smash your scale.

We need to be kinder to ourselves, especially when it comes to what we eat and drink. We may think enforcing rules surrounding food is the way to maintain control, but really it only perpetuates our feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. Intuitive eating on the other hand involves listening to your body’s natural wisdom to guide your food and drink choices, and is a compassionate approach to nourishing your body.

We live in a culture that provides countless ways to question our worth and few ways to trust and love ourselves, including with our food. To overcome all these confusing messages about what and how much to eat, we can become intuitive eaters, which empowers you to listen to the natural cues of your body to determine when and what to eat, and enables you to make peace with food, your body, and yourself.