When it comes to your health, food and your body, dieting and pursuing weight loss aren’t your only options.

For decades, I never thought I had a choice but to try to make my body smaller. I learned at a young age that I shouldn’t be eating certain foods and that exercise was a way for me to keep my weight down.

I never challenged the idea. And in a super judgy way, I felt better about myself that I was so committed to my health. I'd be proud of my juicer, the smoothies I carried around with me, and my to-go bags of celery and carrot sticks.

Yet, eating “healthy” and being “good” wasn’t something I could do all of the time. I’m sure you can relate. I overate and binged a few times a week. If my husband and I got take out on the weekend, I'd always over do it so my belly felt way too uncomfortably full. If I started to eat chocolate, cookies or brownies, I couldn't stop myself from eating way too much.

This is the trap that many dieters are in. It’s nearly impossible to stay on a diet. Overeating and going off the diet is just inevitable. Yet, when you don’t realize you have another choice, what do you do?

You keep trying other diets, hoping a new one will work.

Because diet culture convinces us the diets do work, you may blame yourself when they don’t work for you.

Yet, the research is clear that diets only lead to weight gain after 3 years.

You may even say “screw it” and just decide to not pay close attention to how you’re eating and how food makes you feel. You refuse to diet, even though a part of you still wants to lose weight. You may feel like you’re betraying yourself.

To get yourself out of this trap, you need to know you have another option when it comes to food and your health.

You can eat a wide variety of foods that you enjoy and not feel guilty about eating.

You can tune into your body’s hunger and fullness signals and allow them to guide how you eat.

By letting go of trying to control food, you can allow food to be a source of joy, nourishment and satisfaction.

This option exists!

When you practice this, you will reclaim time and energy and feel peaceful around food.