Professional Blogs
6 Signs Diet Culture Has Infiltrated Your Business
As an entrepreneur in the non-diet space, you’re likely familiar with the harmful effects of diet culture on individuals. But have you ever considered that these same oppressive tactics might be seeping into your business practices?
In this article, we’ll explore the uncanny parallels between diet culture and what I call “oppressive business culture.” We’ll dive into six telltale signs that diet culture has infiltrated your business and how this infiltration might be holding you back from the success and impact you deserve.
There are uncanny parallels between oppressive business culture and diet culture
Just as diet culture promises rapid weight loss and one-size-fits-all meal plans, oppressive business culture dangles the carrot of “6 figures in 6 months” and “the right strategy for everyone’s success.” Both rely on external solutions, implying that you’re not good enough or smart enough on your own. Let’s break down these parallels:
1. Quick Fixes: Diet culture says, “Lose 30lbs in 30 days.” Similarly, oppressive business culture claims, “Make 6 figures in 6 months.” Both are unrealistic and can lead to burnout.
2. One-Size-Fits-All: Diet culture preaches, “The right meal plan makes everyone healthy.” In business, it’s “The right strategy will make anyone successful.” Both ignore individual needs and circumstances.
3. Focus on Externals: Diet culture declares, “Thinner is better.” Oppressive business culture echoes, “Bigger bank account is better.” Both overlook personal well-being and fulfillment.
6 signs that Diet Culture has infiltrated your business:
Now, let’s dive into a checklist. If you find yourself nodding along to these signs, it’s likely that diet culture has snuck into your business mindset:
1. You believe there’s a “right way” to do business
Just as there’s no single diet that works for everyone, there’s no universal “right way” to run a business. If you’re constantly chasing the perfect strategy, pricing structure, or marketing plan, you might be under the influence of oppressive business culture.
2. You’re afraid to fail
In diet culture, “failing” means gaining weight or not sticking to the plan. In business, it might mean not hitting a revenue goal or losing a client. This fear can paralyze you, preventing you from taking risks that could lead to growth.
3. You experience imposter coach syndrome
Do you feel like you need just one more certification to be “credible”? This is akin to dieters thinking they need just one more supplement or workout to be “healthy.” Your expertise comes from your unique experiences and the impact you have on clients.
4. You compare yourself to colleagues in despair
Just as dieters compare their bodies to others, you might be comparing your business to your colleagues’. Remember, their journey is not yours, and comparison often leads to self-doubt and inaction.
5. You’re “all in” one week, then “nothing” for two
This sounds like yo-yo dieting, doesn’t it? One week, you’re hustling 24/7; the next, you’re burnt out and can’t look at your business. Sustainable success requires consistent, balanced effort.
6. You spend too much time trying to do things “perfectly”
In diet culture, perfectionism might mean never missing a workout or eating a “forbidden” food. In business, it’s obsessing over every email or social media post. Perfection is a myth that steals your time and energy.
It’s not your fault if Diet Culture has infiltrated your business
Here’s the truth: just as you didn’t create diet culture, you didn’t create oppressive business culture. These systems are pervasive, and it’s no wonder they’ve seeped into your entrepreneurial journey. Remember when you couldn’t believe that diet culture was the problem, not your body? Now, it’s the same with your business.
What your brain labels as a “problem” in your business often isn’t a problem at all. The real issue is the oppressive business culture that overwhelms us with endless to-dos, “right way” thinking, perfectionism, and people-pleasing. It’s not you; it’s the system.
The Solution
The solution isn’t another strategy, course, or certification. It’s the same thing that freed you from diet culture: self-trust.
The solution: Self-Trust
What if you could trust yourself with your business decisions as implicitly as you now trust your body’s hunger and fullness cues? Imagine the freedom, confidence, and growth that would unfold. Just as intuitive eating transformed your relationship with food, intuitive business practices can revolutionize your entrepreneurial journey.
The key is to focus on reshaping your business mindset, not just your tactics. When you change how you think about your clients, your offers, and yourself as a coach, you’ll operate from a place of integrity. This shift leads to higher-value actions and, ultimately, a business that creates what I call “Good Money” – income that aligns with your values and serves your mission.
The Good Money Business Mentorship
This is where my Good Money Business Mastermind comes in. It’s not just a business mentorship; it’s a collective of ambitious, driven, and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches. We’re on a mission to dismantle diet culture – both in our clients’ lives and in our own business practices.
In this mastermind, we don’t chase arbitrary revenue goals or push “quick fix” tactics. Instead, we focus on building businesses that reflect our values, serve our communities, and yes, make good money. Because making an impact and making an income are not mutually exclusive.
Conclusion: Your Business, Your Rules
Remember, it’s supposed to take time to build a great business, just like it takes time to make peace with food. The claim that business success should be fast if you “do it right” is as oppressive as the diet industry’s rapid weight loss promises.
I’ve shared my own business journey to normalize this reality. It took me years to build a six-figure business, and each stage was marked by personal growth, not just revenue growth. Your journey will be unique, but the principles remain the same: trust yourself, align with your values, and reject the oppressive narratives.
If you’re ready to build a business that feels as good as it performs, I invite you to join us in the Good Money Business Mastermind. Together, we’ll dismantle diet culture in all its forms and create businesses that truly nourish – our clients, our communities, and ourselves.
Remember, you’re not just building a business; you’re part of a revolution. And that, my friend, is worth far more than any “7-figure coaching business” ideal.
How we can help
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Good Money Business Mastermind A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it!
How to Coach Eating Behaviors
Do you feel trapped in an endless cycle of dieting, restrictive eating, and guilt? You’re not alone.
In this article, you’ll learn a compassionate, non-diet approach to developing a healthier relationship with food and your eating behaviors. Say goodbye to rigid rules and hello to sustainable strategies that align with your values and goals.
Many of us struggle with emotional eating, binge eating, or restrictive patterns that leave us feeling frustrated and disconnected from our true hunger cues. This vicious cycle can take a toll on our physical and emotional well-being, leading to feelings of shame, low self-esteem, and a preoccupation with food. But there is a way out – a path towards a more balanced, intuitive approach to eating.
Coaching Eating Behaviors: What to do instead?
The Cognitive Behavioral Coaching method enables you to explore your motivations, triggers, and patterns surrounding food. It helps cultivate self-awareness, mindfulness, and self-compassion, empowering you to make choices that truly nourish your mind, body, and soul. Prepare to break free from the diet mentality and embrace a healthier, more fulfilling way of living.
Instead of restrictive diets or one-size-fits-all rules, the CBC method encourages a more holistic and personalized approach to developing a healthy relationship with food. It’s about understanding your unique motivations, triggers, and patterns, and finding strategies that work for you – not against you.
Coaching Eating Behaviors Using CBC Coaching
The CBC approach is rooted in the principles of cognitive behavioral coaching, which recognizes that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are interconnected. By exploring and understanding these connections, we can identify areas for change and develop more constructive patterns.
Step 1: Understanding How Human Behavior is Generated
The first step in the CBC process is to gain insight into the fundamental drivers of human behavior. Our actions are influenced by a complex interplay of thoughts, emotions, physiological states, and environmental factors. By developing self-awareness and mindfulness, clients can begin to observe these influences without judgment, creating a foundation for lasting change.
Step 2: Investigate the Environment
Our physical and social environments play a significant role in shaping our eating behaviors. This step involves exploring the various cues, triggers, and situations that may contribute to unhealthy patterns. For example, a client may notice that they tend to overeat when stressed at work or when socializing with friends who encourage indulgence. By identifying these environmental factors, we can develop strategies to create a more supportive and conducive environment for healthier choices.
Coaching Eating Behaviors: 6 coaching questions
1. “What does a healthy relationship with food mean to you?”
This deceptively simple question encourages clients to reflect deeply on their values, priorities, and desired outcomes beyond just weight loss or adhering to food rules. A healthy relationship with food means different things to different people – it could mean feeling energized, nourishing their body with foods they enjoy, or setting an example of balance for their children. By defining what success looks like for them, clients can stay motivated and focused on their personal goals.
2. “How do your current eating behaviors align (or misalign) with your values and goals?”
Our actions often stem from deeply ingrained habits, emotions, or coping mechanisms that may no longer serve us. This question prompts clients to examine the alignment between their eating patterns and the things that truly matter to them. Perhaps emotional eating is causing feelings of guilt that conflict with their value of self-care. Or nighttime snacking might be hindering their goal of having more energy during the day. Exploring these disconnects can provide powerful motivation for change.
3. “What situations or emotions tend to trigger unhealthy eating patterns for you?”
Understanding personal triggers is crucial for interrupting unhealthy cycles. Clients may identify stress, boredom, loneliness, or even positive events like celebrations as common triggers for overeating or making poor food choices. Once these triggers are identified, we can co-create coping strategies and alternative behaviors to address them in a healthier way.
4. “How can you practice self-compassion when you experience setbacks or slip-ups?”
Change is rarely linear, and setbacks are an inevitable part of the process. This question encourages clients to treat themselves with kindness and understanding, rather than harsh self-criticism or shame. Self-compassion might involve reassuring self-talk, remembering that one lapse doesn’t undo all progress, or simply taking a moment to breathe and reset.
5. “What small, manageable steps can you take to move closer to your desired eating behaviors?”
Big, sweeping changes can often feel overwhelming and unsustainable. This question helps clients break down their goals into smaller, actionable steps that feel achievable. It could involve strategies like meal planning, trying new recipes, or finding alternative coping mechanisms for difficult emotions. Celebrating these small wins builds confidence and momentum.
6. “How can I best support and encourage you throughout this process?”
Every client is unique, with different needs, preferences, and circumstances. By asking this question, I ensure that my coaching approach is tailored to meet them where they are. Some may benefit from more accountability and structure, while others may need a softer, more self-compassionate style of support. Individualized coaching is key to lasting success.
Step 3: Show Why It’s Not About the Food
While food choices play a role, our relationship with eating often goes much deeper than what’s on our plate. This step involves exploring the underlying thoughts, beliefs, and emotional drivers that influence our behaviors around food. For some, food may serve as a coping mechanism for stress, loneliness, or difficult emotions. For others, deeply ingrained beliefs about body image, self-worth, or societal ideals may contribute to restrictive or binge eating patterns. By uncovering and addressing these root causes, we can begin to shift our relationship with food on a more profound level.
Step 4: Change the Thoughts/Beliefs
Once we’ve identified the unhelpful thoughts or beliefs driving unhealthy eating behaviors, the next step is to reframe and restructure these patterns of thinking. Cognitive-behavioral techniques, such as challenging cognitive distortions, reframing negative self-talk, and cultivating more compassionate inner dialogues, can be powerful tools in this process. For example, a client who believes they “don’t deserve” to eat certain foods might work on replacing that thought with a more balanced and self-accepting perspective. As our thoughts shift, so too can our behaviors and emotional responses to food.
Coaching Eating Behaviors: Key Takeaways
- Ditch the diets and embrace a kinder approach to eating that’s all about self-discovery, not self-denial.
- Get real with yourself about your motivations, triggers, and patterns around food so you can make choices that truly nourish your mind and body.
- Be your own bestie and practice self-compassion when you stumble – change is a journey, not a destination, and you’ve got this!
How we can help
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body-neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
$156,000 in Cash Revenue
**This is the copy of the email we sent on January 1st, 2023 to our Professional community.
In 2022 I created US $156 K in cash for my business.
Phew… I did it. I shared this publicly.
I’ve been sitting on this email for weeks. I did a LOTS of self-coaching about sharing this. Every part of me wanted NOT to do it… I felt a lot of shame not making 7 figures in my business while teaching and coaching.
And I knew this meant only one thing: I needed to do it.
I share this fact – $156K in cash revenue – to celebrate myself AND to model a new way to think about business.
I share this with you because I believe we all need to see more “normal” and “average” business results celebrated.
I’m sharing this to normalize not making millions in your coaching business.
I’m sharing this to show the BEAUTIFUL and FANTASTIC financial reality of 88% of female entrepreneurs.
I’m sharing this to break the “7 figure coaching business” ideal most of us are sold into by toxic & oppressive business culture. (thin ideal parallel here …)
I’m sharing this for the same reason I’m posting full-body pictures on social media… for my healing and to help normalize fat women making a living being a coach, nutritionist, or anything they want to be.
When I decided to close the nutrition clinic in 2016 and launch Beyond The Food online biz I made only one commitment to myself: never to quit.
And I want to acknowledge that I’m privileged to have been about to do this. I came to entrepreneurship with 15 years of business coaching & sales experience in the corporate world. Although not all the knowledge was transferable, most of it was.
Although I built both businesses by investing in my own money, I’m privileged that I had access to much higher than the average income for years. In contrast, most do not have access to personal wealth when they start the entrepreneurial journey.
Entrepreneurship requires a shit-ton of risk-taking, AND it’s a lot easier when you are white, cis-gendered, straight, and have a great support system. Yes, I have worked hard and had a huge advantage in making my business successful.
The year I took quitting off the table: 2017
2017- The new biz made 21K
My first full year with Beyond The Food online biz after closing in 2016 my first business, a nutrition clinic. I felt lost; honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought about quitting almost every week but never did because of the one promise I made myself. The first year was hard.
Most of my living expenses came from saving. If you are a new coach, I recommend not quitting your full-time gig as most of us do not make a decent income during the first few years of business.
The year I invested in my first mastermind: 2018
2018- The biz made 36K
Transparency: The $10K mastermind investment was 100% coming from my savings. I invested money the business didn’t have: I bet on myself. Year 2 was hard.
I learned one of the most powerful lessons in entrepreneurship: not being in alignment between my personal and business value feels terrible and leads to massive anxiety. Although I didn’t have a name for it at the time: Bro Marketing and I had met.
The year I learned to blow my mind
2019 – The biz made 56K
I met the coach that would teach me what would forever change me as a human and an entrepreneur: come in Kara Lowentheil and the feminist mindset coaching. My business doubled in 6 months of coaching with her because I was in full alignment. Year 3 made it easy.
None of Kara’s teaching at the time was about business tactics, but instead, I learned how to “manage my mind,” and that’s what doubled my income.
The year I integrated mindset in every dam part of my life.
2020 – The biz made 119k
The year of me believing at the DNA level, “I’m enough & I’m innately worthy .”I kept working with Kara, and we coached hard… and I blew my mind. Again 100% mindset work, not biz tactics, and for the second year ago I doubled my revenue.
The year I shut down 7 programs and made more money
2021 – 136K
The year I simplified my business. I shut down 7 coaching programs. I took the risk to bet on what was working and what I loved doing. Undiet Your Life brand was born, and Non-Diet Mentorship amplified to be a professional skill program and business building.
The year of transforming my relationship to work
2022 – 156K
The year of letting go of “I have to”. The simplification of my business in 2021 exposed a lot of resistance to working being easy, and I knew I couldn’t keep growing my business with this work mindset. I hired a private coach 100% focused on healing past corporate career traumas and learning to work from “I choose to”…
2023 is about integrating the new identity I lovingly call “Grandioso”… the version of me that will take my business and life to the next level.
I do not have a financial goal for 2023 but I know that so far, for 2023 I have 45K in revenue secured (aka under contract).
Here’s what I know for sure: “I’d still be doin’ this if I wasn’t doin’ this .”(Lyrics from Luke Combs’s song -Doin’ This.)
Entrepreneurship has been the single most significant personal development platform I have experienced in 47 years of living and where I’ve been the happiest.
I’m a new person today because of my business. A version of me that I much enjoy being.
The Beyond the Food biz has given a sense to my life.
Everything that happened to me now has meaning. All the hardship I have experienced happened for a reason: to be here today, helping others move through their hardship.
To be of service.
I believe I was born to this “beyond the food thing”…to be part of a revolution, and to me, this is worth way more than the “7 figure coaching business” ideal.
Wishing you a beautiful 2023,
With love and excitement for what is to come for us.
xoxo,
Stephanie
Anti-Diet Training for Health Coaches
One of the frequent questions from health coaches who encounter my work in the non-diet approach for the first time is this:
How do I make money as a non-diet coach?
I get it. I had the same question 6 years ago when I first came to the world of anti-diet health coaching. If we don’t tell people what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat, what will they pay us for? Right?
Clients seeking services from a non-diet health coach have a lot they are willing to pay for: primarily ending their struggle with food and body. Helping them relearning to eat following their own eating cues instead of a “health coach” looking over their shoulder lol! Undoing all the body-shaming that “weight loss coaches” have created within them, being able to trust their own choices when it comes to health, undoing the critical mean girl voices in their head, etc…
The list could go on, but simply: undoing the work of diet culture. That’s how you make money as a non-diet health coach. If you have been through the process of unlearning diet culture yourself, you’ll know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t yet, it’s normal you don’t get it and this is the first place you need to start: doing the work of unlearning diet culture yourself.
Anti-diet training for health coaches
Starting an anti-diet coaching business
What I wish I knew before starting my non-diet health coaching business
The anti-diet approach mentorship program
Anti-diet training for health coaches
The process of becoming an anti-diet health coach starts with your own healing from years of restrictions, cleanses, detoxing, overthinking, shame and guilt. We have plenty of resources on anti-diet training for health coaches to help you take this first step along with professional training.
We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet professional starter pack.
I would suggest you also subscribe to anti-diet podcast .
Starting an anti-diet coaching business
Starting an anti-diet coaching business (also referred to by some as an intuitive eating business is simple. It is the same as starting any other business: You create a product, in the anti-diet health coaching business this would be a coaching package, and you go out into the world and sell this product.
As soon as you start working with clients, you will know just how powerful your product truly is. Research is clear about the benefits of health coaching: Significant improvements in one or more of the health-promoting behaviors when interacting with a health coach. You will see the changes in your clients quickly and your confidence in your business will grow rapidly.
My anti-diet business journey
My first business in the world of health coaching was actually a nutrition clinic in Toronto Canada. Five years ago, I transitioned my health coaching business to the non-diet model and I shared the details of my business transition to the anti-diet model in season 1 of the Pro’s podcast series.
I’d like to give you an inside view into my anti-diet health coaching business more precisely what I wish I knew before starting my anti-diet health coaching business.
As I say in every episode of the Going Beyond The Food podcast: Ready? Let’s do this!
By the way, if you would like to access more details, hear my personal story that created each one of these learning head over to our podcast and listen to Season 2 Episode 2 – My Non-diet business journey episode or listen directly below:
What I wish I knew before starting my non-diet health coaching business
- It’s about helping others, not turning a profit. Profit will come naturally as you help others and live your life in your zone of genius.
- You can make a great living as an anti-diet health coach in a career helping others deeply despite what anyone says.
- 6 P’s: Proper Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance. You need to be strategic about your business and organize yourself. What you should do is not always what you wish you could do.
- Learn how to coach people. Coaching is not – this is how I did it so that’s the way. What worked for me is not what will work for my client. Coaching is a skill.
- Create goals and apply consistent action. Show up consistently day in and day out in your business. Take one action at bare minimum daily.
- Asking for help is ok. Your client asked for you, so should you.
- Use technology so you can maximize your time being a coach. Technology can help, but don’t forget that health coaching is about the people.
- Trying to be everything to everyone is a straight road to failure. Pick a niche and become the world expert at it.
- Growing a business is not linear. There will be more downs than ups. Successful businesses don’t happen overnight. It takes time.
- Be unapologetically YOU. Don’t copy what other non-diet coaches are doing. Your clients want to work with you.
The anti-diet approach certification program
The Non-Diet Coaching Certification is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program geared to refine your non-diet professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women. It will help you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You will learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
Anti-diet training for health coaches
We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet professional starter pack.
I would suggest you also subscribe to anti-diet podcast and start with episode 199 and follow through up to the latest one.
Starting an anti-diet coaching business
Starting an anti-diet coaching business (also referred to by some as an intuitive eating business) is simple. It is the same as starting any other business: You create a product, in the anti-diet health coaching business this would be a coaching package, and you go out into the world and sell this product.
My anti-diet business journey
My first business in the world of health coaching was actually a nutrition clinic in Toronto Canada. Five years ago, I transitioned my health coaching business to the non-diet model and I shared the details of my business transition to the anti-diet model in season 1 of the Pro’s podcast series.
What I wish I knew before starting my non-diet health coaching business
1. It’s about helping others, not turning a profit.
2. You can make a great living as an anti-diet health coach.
3. 6 P’s: Proper Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance.
4. Learn how to coach people.
5. Create goals and apply consistent action.
6. Asking for help is ok.
7. Use technology so you can maximize your time being a coach.
8. Trying to be everything to everyone is a straight road to failure.
9. Growing a business is not linear.
10. Be unapologetically YOU.
Ready to take the next steps
The anti-diet approach mentorship program
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Good Money Business Mastermind A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it!
Non-Diet Approach for Health Coaching
When I first started in my nutrition practice the term “non-diet approach” didn’t even cross my mind. “Anti-diet approach” didn’t even exist. Unbeknown to me, I was practicing the “diet approach to nutrition” simply because that’s what was taught in health & nutrition school.
Fast forward close to 10 years now, a lot have changed. The non-diet approach is growing rapidly, so has the anti-diet approach and intuitive eating is booming.
So, let’s discover what is the non-diet approach.
Core values of the non-diet approach
The pillars of the non-diet approach
Non-diet approach training for professionals
What is the non-diet approach?
The non-diet approach to health coaching & nutrition is the exact opposite of dieting. It recognizes that food, eating and body weight aren’t the problem to be fixed. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recover from diet culture and learn the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.
Core values of the non-diet approach
The non-diet approach to health coaching and nutrition holds key core values: Fundamentally, it recognizes that diets do not work. It’s holistic in nature. It is focused on the Why not the What, it’s focused on finding solution that are based on love and compassion. Moreover, it believes that all humans and bodies are worthy.
Diets don’t work
A 2016 study by researchers at UCLA studied 40,420 adult participants in the most recent U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Researchers looked at the participants’ health as measured by six accepted metrics (not including BMI). These metrics are blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, insulin resistance, and C-reactive protein.
The study found that 47% of people classified as overweight by BMI and 29% of those qualified as obese were healthy based on at least five of those other metrics.
Meanwhile, 31% of normal-weight people were unhealthy by two or more of the same measures.
A number of research studies show that weight loss is not necessary to improve physical health. Studies have also found that fitness is more predictive for mortality than weight. This study defined ‘fit’ as 3-4 hrs per week of walking.
Note: “Fit” is not synonymous with “thin” or “lean.” That’s Diet Culture. Being fit means being in good health, especially because of regular physical movement.
Furthermore, trying to change your health status simply by losing weight has not only proven to be an ineffective approach but also carries potential negative side effects to your health. The focus on intentional weight loss via dieting can be harmful. Multiple studies demonstrate negative side effects of dieting behaviors. The three most documented negative effects are weight cycling, disordered eating, and weight stigma.
The non-diet approach for health coaching is holistic
The World Health Organization defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The non-diet approach is a weight-neutral approach to health is based on the idea that your health status or risk level can’t be determined solely by your weight.
Instead it recognized that humans are more than a physical body: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical human bodies.
Its focus is on the WHY instead of the WHAT
The non-diet approach looks at the root cause of the behaviors. For example, when considering nutrition it considers why the individual is eating instead what the individual is eating. What we eat, how we eat and when we eat come second to why we eat.
Compassion versus fear-based threat
The non-diet approach will help the client switch his approach to health behavior to one of compassion for self. It will help form a relationship of respect towards one’s body helping the client to make choice based in love for body and self instead of fear (fear of disease, fear of weight gain, fear of other people opinion, etc…)
All humans are worthy; All bodies are worthy
The non-diet approach is grounded in the fact that all humans are worthy therefore all bodies are worthy. The non-diet recognizes the danger to one’s health when face with any stigma, discrimination or prejudice.
Therefore, the non-diet approach must be anti-discriminatory: anti-fatphobia, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-transphobia, anti-classist, non-binary, etc.
The pillars of the non-diet approach for health coaching
When practicing the non-diet approach to health and nutrition with clients, practitioners must follow a sequential order in their approach. Although adaptable in nature, some fundamental pillars must be in place
1. Investigation of belief and history
The first step is for the practitioner to have a clear understanding of the current state of their clients/ patients relationship to food and body. A number of assessments are available: Intuitive eating assessment, Body Acceptance Assessment and Dieting Impact Inventory.
Next, the practitioner will help the client understand how they go to be where they are right now using a dieting timeline. It’s very important for the patient to understand that it’s not their fault but instead diet culture.
2. Mindset & Unlearning Diet Culture
The next phase of the non-diet approach is the most important: unlearning. Unlearning the diet mindset, dogmatic beliefs about food and exercise, the thin ideal, etc..
When we trained professional inThe Going Beyond The Food Method™ our practitioners are trained in a Cognitive Behavior Therapy approach called Self-Coaching. This will be the tool they will teach their client to help them unlearn Diet Culture.
3. Attunement & Reconnecting
As the client progress in unlearning diet culture the next steps will be to help patient to reconnect with their body via body sensation. Using various mindfulness approach our graduates of our non-diet certification have a number of tools available to them to teach their client attuned with their body.
The first set of sensations we focus on with the clients are eating cues: hunger, fullness and satisfaction. Gradually, clients will be able to trust their own ability to read and interpret their innate body sensations.
4. Emotional Intelligence & Processing
As the client gets more attuned to her own innate body wisdom, the focus will shift to building skills set to process emotions & feelings. One of the most effective tools for this step is deconstruction of the eating behavior using two questions: What am I feeling? and What do I need?
The outcome of these pillars is to build emotional intelligence and shift the individual engagement with their emotions from Reacting to Responding.
5. Empowerment & Relearning
The non-diet approach is truly beyond the food and this next pillar is the reason behind this powerful transformative process.
To help build empowerment, the process of habituation will be use to help client regain power over fear foods. Gradually reclaiming their power at first with food and naturally expanding their empowerment to other part of their life using their inner wisdom.
6. Respect & Liberation
In this last step practitioner will support client in the process of rebuilding a relationship of respect with their own body. Engaging in body image healing using body neutrality and Health At Every Size approach to help build an inventory of health promoting behaviors.
At this point in the process client is also ready to re-engage with food using a gentle nutrition philosophy and with exercise using a joyful movement approach.
Non-diet approach training for professional
We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet professional starter pack.
You can also listen to our non-diet podcast.
The non-diet approach mentorship program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet approach mentorship program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program geared to refine your non-diet professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women. It will help you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You will learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
Non-Diet Approach FAQs
The non-diet approach to health & nutrition is the exact opposite of dieting. It recognizes that food, eating and body weight aren’t the problem to be fixed.
It’s a weight-neutral approach to health instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.
The non-diet approach to health and nutrition holds key core values: Fundamentally, it recognizes that diets do not work. It’s holistic in nature. It is focused on the Why not the What, it’s focused on finding solution that are based on love and compassion. Moreover, it believes that all humans and bodies are worthy.
1. Investigation of belief and history
2. Mindset & Unlearning Diet Culture
3. Attunement & Reconnecting
4. Emotional Intelligence & Processing
5. Empowerment & Relearning
6. Respect & Liberation
We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet professional starter pack.
You can also listen to our non-diet podcast.
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet approach mentorship program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program geared to refine your non-diet professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.
Non-Diet Business Training
Non-Diet Business Training is essential for any women health entrepreneurs starting their business adventure in the non-diet health approach.
Your business success means women’s learning how to ditch diet culture. Your willingness to accept that your business success means more lives transformed is key to your being successful in your professional journey.
In the same way you ask your client/patient to invest in themselves by working with you: are you investing in yourself to be successful in your business?
Non-Diet Business Training
In episode 2 of season 1 of the Pro series, we discovered why crafting a business strategy is so important to your overall business. Without the foundation of a strategy, there’s very little chance your business will grow and transform hundreds of women’s lives.
In today’s episode, we will discover the various business model available to you to create your business strategy. A business model is a framework for how you will create value. It answers fundamental questions about the problem you are going to solve, how you will solve it, and the growth opportunity within a given market.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- What is a business model
- Why it’s important to have a business model
- Look behind the scene of my business model
- The one thing that most important to your business success
Mentioned in the show:
Mentorship Program
Free Intuitive Eating Guide
PRO Series – Free Training & Resources
PRO Podcast series – Full listing
Our Anti-Racism Commitment
For most of my life, I have been one of those liberal inclusive feminists who believe that I wasn’t racist. I could have listed many reasons to demonstrate how I wasn’t racist. That’s until last weekend.
And then someone sent me this quote:
“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
— Angela Davis
I was well verse in thin privilege but not for one minute did I thought about white privileges. That ignorance is what hurts black people.
I’m sorry. I am listening. I am learning.
To the black people in our community, you are in my heart and prayers but most importantly, my actions.
What am I doing?
I’m being a student: this is not my area of expertise so I found teachers. Just like a toddler taking her first step I’m trying, making mistakes, and learning. I stumble and stand up again.
I’m investigating how my white privilege is showing up… Neither I’m staying silent while I’m learning because our silence as a white people is complicit in perpetuating systemic racism. I’m speaking to my followers, students, clients, and YOU right here right now.
I am leading.
I’m committed to the work of anti-racism. As the CEO of Beyond The Food I’m committing this company to be anti-racist.
Here’s a few tools I’d like to share with you on anti-racism
1. I discovered this site that answered all of my questions and give me next steps . Anti-Racist Resources Center
2. I watched some movies and documentaries that were mind-blowing: 13th on Netflix, Selma on iTunes & Harriet on iTtunes.
3. I donate to The Loveland Foundation that supports access to therapy for black women and girls.
4. I want to share with you my favorite teacher, Rachel E. Cargle. Go watch her Public Address.
Feminism and Diet Culture
Statistics may vary to the exact % but one thing is clear: most women are dissatisfied with their body.
Research released by Dove, for their ‘Self-Esteem Project’, found that 96% of women in the UK reported feeling anxious about the way they look, compared with 86% in China, 72% in Brazil, and 61% in the US. Only 4% of the women in all the countries surveyed would consider themselves ‘beautiful’, and by the time girls reach 17, 78% will be ‘unhappy with their bodies’.
Women don’t diet because they enjoy dieting. Women who diet do it because they think they have to. These women think they are their body, thus, their bodies’ ability to meet the diet culture expectations define their worth.
Helping women leave and recover from diet culture is a feminist issue.
Why a non-diet approach for women?
The intersection between diet culture & women history
Women socialization to diet culture
Women internalization of diet culture
Non-diet Approach for women Professional Training
Non-diet Approach for women mentorship
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 6
Links mentioned in the episode…
feminism and diet culture
Why a non-diet approach for women?
When women first seek to stop dieting, they think they need to “fix” their “food issue”. After years of dieting they’ve been told in many different ways that the issue was them, not the food. That if they could eat “normally” they would finally achieve their “normal body”. Sounds familiar?
It’s normal that your future client thinks like this… that’s all they’ve ever known. They’ve spent their life wondering why they struggle with food and if they could only “fix what’s wrong with them and food,” life would unlock their dreams.
The truth is: they have no issues with food. In fact, as we discovered in S1 EP 1 Intuitive eating Mentorship – First do no harm for us, as practitioners, to validate their thoughts about food and them being the issue can cause more harm. The way they engage with food now is the result of the restriction of dieting. Dieting is the issue not food. But why do your clients diet? As we’ve learned in the last episode: fatphobia: the fear of fatness.
A weight-neutral approach to health
The non-diet approach helps clients stop dieting, make peace with food and body image. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that helps people reconnect to their innate power and become their own expert at their bodies.
Although the non-diet approach is gender-neutral, I believe that a segment of the healing approach should address the specific forces pulling at each gender/ sex: Cis-women, Cis-men, Trans, Genderqueer, non-binary, etc… I believe that each gender should have non-diet professionals that understand the specificities and struggle for each group for the best care.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is for people that identify as women. I created this methodology based on my experience as a cis-woman over the last 45 years. As a person in a women’s body who has been exposed to the force of patriarchy and its attempt to control me as a woman and my body.
feminism and diet culture
Feminism & diet culture
First, let’s take a step back and understand patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of properties. Patriarchy views men as dominant and women as submissive.
One of the many ways in which patriarchy attempts to dominate women is by exerted forces that dictate how women handle their bodies: reproduction, sexuality, beauty, and yes, body size and shape.
Most recently over the last 100 years, Diet Culture has become the cultural form of oppression on women’s bodies. Diet culture judges women’s worth based on their physical body size and looks. It assigns moral values to the ability of women to meet up with their standards.
The diet culture keeps women focusing on their bodies. Dieting keeps women distracted on food, exercise, and trying harder at restricting instead of using their innate resources to achieving much more important things in their life. Given that the tools proposed to women to achieve their “ideal body according to patriarchy” doesn’t work, it keeps women thinking they are the problem and not the diet. Women keep doubting themselves, their abilities, their capacities, and their obsession with trying to make up for what they are told are a personal failure to achieve the “good enough body”.
It is my belief as a health professional that women must understand why they “chase” a smaller body to their healing and recovery. For women, to truly liberate themselves from diet culture and its chain, they must know why society created it in the first place.
The intersection between diet culture & women history
If you look through history, their beauty or body didn’t always control women. Instead, their ability to procreate and religion controlled women. It’s not until recently that women’s bodies became the center of attention.
The mid 19th century
The feminist movement was beginning to form as women gain access to education. Women involved themselves in the abolition movement and women continued asking for their own political power. As women become more vocal and demanding more power, patriarchy responded with pressure on women’s bodies to be smaller.
feminism and diet culture
The Gibson Girl
The Gibson Girl was born in 1880. This was the personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness as portrayed by male artist Charles Dana Gibson. This body female ideal was heavily promoted and published via the new magazine and printing industry. So, ensure product advertisement ways to look like Gibson’s girl: beauty products, pills, cream, arsenic pills, etc…Diet culture was born. This period also introduced ready-made clothes and women needed to “fit” clothes when up to then clothes were made to fit women.
feminism and diet culture
The Flapper girl
As the suffragette movement began to gain the right to vote in many countries, the Flapper girl was born. Women became “liberated” from the Gibson girl corset only to find themselves binding their natural feminine curve into the linear look of the 1920’s. Thinness was a sign of “perceived freedom” for women. This solidified the diet culture.
feminism and diet culture
Twiggy
With every gain in socio-economic power, women gained a smaller and smaller body ideal. Whereas the first-wave feminism in the early 90’s focused mainly on suffrage and political power, the second-wave feminism that began in the late 1960’s was focused on equality issues. That’s when Twiggy became the first supermodel; willowy, thin, adolescent physique.
feminism and diet culture
The 80’s
In the 80’s as women affirmed their new equality, came the low-calories, low-fat, and aerobic era with Jane Fonda as the leader. Calories counting began and this is when women became obsessed with dieting.
feminism and diet culture
And it continues up to today. The 90’s saw Kate Moss as the body ideal for all women. With an even smaller body than Twiggy, women’s ideal was body waifish, extremely thin described as “Heroin Chic”. The ’00s saw the Victoria Secret angels, and today we have the influencer healthy body ideal throne by the Kardashian.
“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one”
– Naomi Wolfe
Women socialization to diet culture
Socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. It may lead to a desirable outcome and in certain aspects of life ensure our survival.
Socialization to diet culture and female body ideal happens at a very young for women. When were you gifted your first Barbie?
Among many societal behaviors, Their body, their beauty, and being a “good girl” defined women. Society conditioned women to please using their bodies. While society defined boys to be strong, intelligent, and non-emotional.
Most women who diet chronically today encountered their first diet in their early teens. They first observed their female caregiver being “dissatisfied” with their body and dieting. As these women entered their puberty and began awakening to being attractive, they engage with their first diet. Worse, some women experienced diet before the age of 10 as their parents wanted to prevent the “shame” of being in a non-conventional body.
feminism and diet culture
Women internalization of diet culture
The process of internalization pertains to the person’s acceptance of a set of norms and values established by others and learned through socialization.
Women internalized diet culture in their teens leading to adulthood. This is when of having to please, as a woman, using among other things our body moves from outside of our own mind to being part of our own mind. At that point, diet culture has shaped who we are as a woman.
As we discussed in a previous article Non-diet Approach: Addressing the root cause, fatphobia is at the root as to why women diet. The process of diet culture internalization leads women to be fatphobic. They fear of being fat. They fear others judging their body as a fat body. It’s said that women fear weight gain more than illness.
Women’s fear of being in a non-confirming body is validated daily. Hundreds, if not thousands of times, marketing images and words, social media, conversation with other women, medical treatment, the beauty industry, etc… remind women that they should fear to be in a non-thin ideal body.
To cope with this constant pressure, women adapt. Diet Brain is a term I coined that best expresses how women adapt to diet culture socialization and internalization. To adapt, women become people-pleasers, we expect perfection for ourselves in the hope to offset our inability to be in a confirming body ideal. While the solution to achieve this thin ideal, “dieting” has a 91-95% failure rate, we blame ourselves for it not working so we adopt an “All or nothing” mindset when it comes to food and health.
This adaptation process is unique to people identifying as women and is the reason why Non-Diet Coaching Certification is essential for health professionals helping women recover from diet culture.
“Your dislike of yourself is a side effect of the POISON you are being fed. None of this messaging is real. Your inner bully has learned the lies society fed it, and is giving you fake news about your looks, your value, your worth, your right to be happy. I’m so sorry you have to deal with this crap. Diet Culture is just making you hate yourself for a profit”
– Naomie Wolfe
Dieting is a feminist issue
Opting out of diet culture as a woman is more than simply stopping dieting. It’s a feminist act. When we stop buying into the diet culture definition of what being a woman is, we reclaim our power back. We say no to being our bodies. We say yes to trusting and respecting ourselves first.
Helping women recover from the diet culture must include the education to how we got to be where we are today as women. That we were capable to feed ourselves, to care for ourselves, and to be more than our bodies. The socialization and internalization of diet culture are what created the beliefs that lead us to dieting and trying to fit in using our own body against ourselves.
One of the paths to reclaim our power from the diet culture can be with intuitive eating. Using our source of shame, that is food, can actually rebuild a relationship of trust and respect towards our own selves. As we reconnect to our innate body wisdom, we get to witness the power that is within us.
As we build confidence in our innate capacity to feed ourselves, we can continue to use diet culture source of shame to regain our power as women. Healing our body image and crafting a new way to be in our human body shell is not only necessary but very empowering.
“If your self-esteem is dependent on external result, you have given all your happiness and agency away. It’s an exhausting, and powerless way to live.”
Women empowerment
Individual autonomy is this idea that refers to the capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces.
Leaving the jail of diet culture is a revolutionary act for women to not only be autonomous but to claim their power back from a patriarchal society that suppressed our empowerment.
In today’s society, the greatest punishment is to take away people’s autonomy and freedom by sending them to jail. Diet culture has taken women’s autonomy and freedom. Diet culture robs women of the capacity to be in their now body, to feed themselves naturally, to wear clothes they desire, to decide their own beauty standards, etc…
Helping women recover from diet culture is truly about empowering women to live their full life today… unconditionally. Choosing to accept your body is hard but doing hard “things” is what builds confidence in women… not body size. Saying ‘no’ to outside control and ‘yes’ to inner power is what builds self-esteem in women, not beauty.
Non-diet Approach for women Training
The non-diet approach is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health and nutrition that empowers women to become the expert of their own body. That shifts women from being their body to supporting their body so they can live their full life… right now!
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recover from diet culture and learn the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive Eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.
You can learn and transform your life with the Going Beyond The Food Method with our two signature program.
Undiet Your Life Program was created for women to learn self-coaching, a powerful mindset self-coaching tool to unlearn diet culture & patriarchy socialization along side with Intuitive Eating and Body Neutrality.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification was created for providers and coaches wanting to deliver the Non-Diet Approach in their practice following the Going Beyond The Food Method.
Want to know if the Non-Diet Approach and The Going Beyond The Food Method can be of support to you? Get my starter pack and complete the three assessment: eating, body image and mindset.
You can also listen to our non-diet podcast.
Non-Diet Approach Certification program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program that will refine your non-diet professional skills set to empower women and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.
It helps you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
The Non-Diet Approach: What is it exactly?
But is the non-diet approach addressing the real root cause?
In the first three years of clinical practice, I thought I was addressing the root cause of my patient health concerns. I was asking a lot of questions and doing an in-depth assessment. My goal was uncovering the “real issue” that no other health professional had identified yet. This unidentified root cause was, as per my training in functional medicine, the reason why my clients were “still struggling”.
As I shared in Intuitive eating Mentorship – First do no harm although my patient had short term reliefs…. long term, their health wasn’t better. In fact, in many cases, it was worse.
So, was I really addressing the “real root cause”?
Why healing the root cause is so important
The Non-diet Approach Professional Training
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 5
Links mentioned in the episode…
Non-Diet Coaching Certification Program
What’s the root cause?
In my training in holistic health & functional medicine, we are trained on addressing the underlying or root cause of chronic disease, taking into account the whole person including their environment, genetics, and lifestyle factors. Addressing the root cause is a fundamental philosophy, and honestly, the pride of alternative health approaches: resolving the root cause vs. just dealing with side effects.
Even beyond the health sector, the root cause is the cause of a problem. If adequately addressed, it will prevent a recurrence of that problem. By asking the question “why” a few times, the root cause of a problem is often identified as a procedural, or management, shortcoming.
For example, imagine you have a lot of weed growing in your lawn. If you remove the weed using a lawnmower, will that solve the problem? Temporarily, yes. Visually, your lawn looks good. However, you probably know that this is only at the surface level. After a short period of time, the weed will grow back. So, how do you fix this long term? If you replied “By removing the weed from the root,” then you are totally right!
As a nutritionist, people came to me to change their eating habits or to address health issues that they thought were caused by food. However, my training had taught me that the root cause was in the: what, when and how they ate.
What I couldn’t understand was why it wasn’t working? Why were my clients not able to adhere to the in-depth protocols? Why were they disappearing after a few sessions? And why, when I would see them a year or two down the road, they had reverted back to their old habits?
Why healing the root cause is so important
If I was healing the root cause, then this shouldn’t be happening. I knew this from my training. So, I started to research and quickly realize I wasn’t addressing the “real root cause” but still just the “ side effects”.
It’s understandable why we are inclined to deal with effects instead of the root cause. Effects are what’s most immediately observable, so it’s easy to act on them. Think here “size of body”. Upon doing so, you see an instantaneous change — an impression that you have progressed in your goals. When you go on a diet, you lose a small amount of weight immediately. That’s until the diet stopped working and you regain all the weight (most often more than the original amount of weight loss).
On the other hand, trying to uncover the root causes can be tedious, complicated, and at times, scary. Sometimes, to the extent where people run away when they realize the root cause problems that are underneath. Subsequently, addressing these root causes often requires a change of thinking and some pain and effort, but the results will be much permanent and higher-value than correcting side effects (symptoms as known in health).
As we touched in our S1 EP3 podcast episode Diet mindset professional training, we unpack how our certain traits of character are the results of dieting.
Here are just some of the real root causes:
- Perfectionism (Effect): Need to have “perfect” diet (Effect): Diet Cycle (Effect): Desire to lose weight (Effect): Body Dissatisfaction (Effect): beliefs about what body should look like (Cause): fatphobia/weight stigma (Cause)
- Low self-confidence (Effect): Need to lose weight (Effect): Perfectionist Body Fantasy(Effect): beliefs about what body should look like (Effect): fatphobia/weight stigma (Cause)
- Binge eating (Effect): food restriction (Effect): Dieting to lose weight (Effect) : fatphobia/weight stigma (Cause)
The root cause wasn’t in the what, when, and how they ate. It was in the why. In my first few years of practice, I stopped asking why too early in my investigation process. Even when I asked “Why do you eat like this?” “Why do you want to lose weight?”…I was blinded by my own fatphobia.
Fatphobia
Fatphobia is the fear and dislike of obese “fat” people and/or “obesity”. I was fatphobic and was profoundly afraid of gaining weight. In fact, I was professionally trained to believe that “fat” was the root cause of most chronic conditions. I was taught that everyone should be or want to be at a “normal BMI”.
Hence, I had to confront my own and discover the truth about body weight, BMI & health to be able to ask the right question with my patient and for my own recovery from diet culture.
Not only was my own fatphobia preventing from being the best health professional I knew I could be, but it also was keeping from accessing my best health. Fatphobia in research is also described as weight stigma. Research recognizes two forms of weight stigma:
Experienced weight stigma
This occurs when people observe or believe that others have made unfair negative assumptions about them or discriminate based on nothing more than their weight or body image.
Internalized weight stigma
This is the process by which people accept weight-based stereotypes and make them true about themselves. People who have internalized weight stigma are the harshest critic of themselves. They have come to believe that they are “less-than” because of their weight/ body image.
Research is pointing out that internalized weight stigma has the greatest impact on physical and mental health over experienced weight stigma.
“Some people fear that if people feel too good about their bodies and themselves, they will not be motivated to engage in healthful eating behaviors and physical activity. Studies show the exact opposite to be true: When people internalize weight stigma and feel bad about themselves because of their weight, they feel less confident in their ability to engage in healthful behaviors and are more prone to binge eating, avoiding physical activity, and other behaviors that contribute to weight gain.”
– Rebecca Pearl, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Weight stigma is the REAL root cause
Weight stigma is the negative attitudes and beliefs about people because of their weight. It leads to the labeling of people with stereotypes based on their weight. Unfortunately, it’s a common belief that weight stigma will motivate people who don’t meet body size ideals to change their behaviors, in order to avoid further stigma.
Weight stigma originated from the “old school” model of behavior changes through punishment or shaming. A great example of this today is the “before and after” picture we see so frequently on social media. They are unfortunately used by many health professionals.
Weight stigma is a centric element of diet culture. In fact, research has demonstrated that diet culture helps frame a larger body as a “health hazard”. I like to explain it to my students as the “goon” of diet culture. Without it, diet culture may stop existing.
Weight stigma has been researched extensively over the last 20 years. What research overwhelmingly shows is that weight stigma doesn’t encourage people to lose weight or improve their health. Instead, stigma leads to a greater risk of depression, poor body image, and self-esteem. It also leads to increased stress, disordered eating behaviors, and avoidance of physical activity.
Weight stigma has also been linked to many common health problems that were first associated with “obesity”. Is “obesity” or the stigma associated with “obesity” the true culprit? As you can imagine, experts and researchers are divided on this question. Since we acknowledge that weight stigma is causing the health issue, then diet culture will need to be condoned publicly… can you see the issue?
You can read more Cyclic Obesity Weight Based Stigma Model.
The Solution: Body Image healing
The only way to address the real root cause is to include body image healing in your practice/ program.
Making peace with my own body and healing my own body image was the path to releasing my own fatphobia. Doing so unlock my ability to end weight stigmatization in my own practice.
What most health professional doesn’t realize is that our individual body image is not only how we see ourselves when we look in the mirror. It’s also multidimensional. It encompasses:
- Perceptual body image: how you see your body
- Affective body image: how you feel about your body
- Cognitive body image: how you think about your body
- Behavioral body image: the way we behave as a result of our perceptual, affective, and cognitive body image.
Research is showing that a distorted body image leads to lower self-esteem, distorted relationship to food, depression, anxiety, hormonal disruption, and many other side effects. Many of our clients and patients come to see us for this in the first place.
Thomas F. Cash, PhD, is a true pioneer in the psychology of physical appearance research. He also developed today’s most effective treatment approach to body image issues, as well as many of the measures used in body-image research. Likewise, the body image healing cognitive-behavioral model is at the center of our proprietary non-diet approach, The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ .
Body Neutrality
In our non-diet clinical approach, we teach our clients the body neutrality framework and not body positivity. It includes body image professional training, the body neutrality framework.
Body Neutrality empowers women to embrace themselves as they are, including the parts they don’t like about themselves. Its focus is to avoid self-hate while simultaneously relieving from the pressure of having to love their body. Most importantly, the goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.
Body Neutrality is the middle ground between positivity and negativity (shaming). Embracing body neutrality over body positivity allows our clients to experience negative feelings about their bodies, but without the pressure that comes with having to be positive all the time.
Body Neutrality helps women detach their self-worth from their bodies (good or bad). It’s about crafting a relationship of functionality with our bodies and engaging with it from a place of self-care instead of control.
Health can be weight-neutral
The World Health Organization defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” A weight-neutral approach to health is based on the idea that your health status or risk level can’t be determined solely by your weight.
It acknowledges that your weight is determined by a complex set of genetic, metabolic, physiological, cultural, social, and behavioral determinants. Many of these factors are either difficult or impossible to change.
Instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome, weight-neutral programs teach you to take charge of the factors within your control. These factors include your thoughts and behaviors. In short, taking charge of these factors will help you improve your well-being, regardless of your weight.
Weight-neutral approaches to health like the non-diet approach have significantly decreased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and depression. They’ve also increased sustainable, enjoyable self-care behaviors such as eating and moving well in the long term.
A 2013 study by the Journal of Obesity found no link between body weight and the way we feel about ourselves. Yet, the findings show a link between how we feel about ourselves and the healthy activities we engage in. Meaning, the better we feel about our bodies the more likely we are to take care of them by eating well and being active, allowing us to create a positive cycle. Likewise, dissatisfaction with our bodies can discourage us from taking part in certain activities, eating properly to fuel our bodies and can eventually lead to weight gain.
The non-diet approach
The non-diet approach to health and nutrition recognizes that weight stigma is a contributor to one’s health. As professionals, we must address how our clients and patients relate to their body as the root cause before we can effectively address the effects ( eating and health habits).
The non-diet approach to health is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that instead focuses on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recover from diet culture and learn the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.
The non-diet approach professional training center
We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet client assessment tools
You can also listen to our non-diet podcast.
You can access non-diet approach training here
The non-diet coaching certification program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program geared to refine your non-diet professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.
It will help you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You will learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
Ready to get started with the Non-Diet Approach?
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Non-Diet Business Coaching & Marketing
Any non-diet business coaching must include a segment on non-diet marketing.
For many, the words marketing is “yucky” or even “salesy”. Many of my new intuitive eating business students at first will tell me “I hate that part of my job”. Is that you, too?
If you are a health professional and have a private practice, then marketing is a vital part of your business. This is even more relevant for non-diet approach health practice.
To help you fall in love with marketing so that you can thrive in your business, this article will discuss…
Understand the non-diet business coaching framework
The best non-diet marketing strategy
3 pillars of non-diet marketing
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 4
Links mentioned in the episode…
Non-Diet Certification Program
Understand the Non-Diet Business Coaching Framework
Let’s lay down the groundwork first about the non-diet approach before we get into the marketing aspect.
The non-diet approach to health is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.
The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recovery from diet culture and learns the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.
The non-diet business coaching framework teaches women health practitioners on how to build successful non-diet businesses. I share the basics of this framework in the first two podcast episodes of the Going Beyond The Food Show Non-Diet PRO. The Intuitive eating Mentorship episode and Intuitive eating Business episode.
Marketing to our future client can appear to be challenging at first. as I argued in my article Diet mindset professional training, our future clients have been used and abused by diet culture and have a very low tolerance to traditional fear-based marketing tactics. Hence, non-diet marketing should be based on love, education, and nurturing. We help people build and grow a profitable anti-diet business that makes good money inside the Good Money Mastermind
The Best Non-Diet Marketing Strategy
Marketing is the art of making change happen.
The success of non-diet marketing resides in the overall non-diet business strategy you have created for your business. So, let me repeat this very important point again: a marketing strategy is part of this overall business strategy. Do you have one of these?
An effective non-diet marketing strategy will help tell a compelling story about your offer/product in a way that will help your niche market (future client/patient) connect to your offer/product with a strong desire to commit (purchase). As a result, the commitment of resources leads to transformation for your client and equal sales and revenue in your business.
The 3 pillars of non-diet marketing
I will be covering the 3 pillars of an effective and profitable non-diet marketing strategy we teach inside the Good Money Mastermind and inside the Non-Diet Coaching Certification.
Pillar 1: Ideal Client Readiness
Trying to please everyone is the #1 marketing mistake that I observed in the health & wellness business sector. This is why the second element of a successful business strategy should include a comprehensive analysis of your ideal client and niche market. After that, you can create a unique marketing initiative that connects with your future clients.
Trying to convince people they need to change is the #2 marketing mistake I observed in the health & wellness business sector. That’s because not all your future clients are ready for your non-diet message now. If your future clients are still deeply entrenched in diet culture, then it will be a complete waste of your time and resource to market to them. Therefore, they need first to be open to a new approach.
Time and time again, women non-diet health entrepreneurs make these mistakes because they operate from fear instead of love. Fear of missing revenue and excluding potential clients is the main denominator of this fear.
By trying to please everyone, you actually prevent your niche clients from connecting with you and most importantly, take action towards their own transformation. Consequently, you prevent your business from being successful.
Therefore, your marketing strategy needs to ensure you connect to your unique niche market and with those in your niche ready to take action towards their own transformation.
Inside our Non-diet Coaching Certification Program, we teach a unique blueprint that blends in the transtheoretical model of transformation with basic marketing techniques.
Pillar 2: Emotional Connection
Our future client has been used and abused by diet culture and the weight loss industry. They have bought a lot of weight loss products out of desperation, and as we know, nothing has worked. Hence, your future clients need not only a different approach but also a different type of marketing.
Emotional marketing refers to marketing and advertising efforts that primarily use emotion to make your audience notice, remember, share, and buy (commit). It taps into the innate human desire to FEEL. Certainly, this is critical to a women-based audience.
The goal is to validate the way they FEEL now and show them how they can FEEL different later (after committing to your product). This type fo marketing helps out future clients buy from their hearts. This is because studies shows that people rely on emotions, rather than rational, to make decisions.
Emotional marketing inspires people to act. Similarly, it encourages more interaction between you and your brand long term which is critical to developing a sustainable non-diet business. Out of 1,400 successful marketing campaigns, those with purely emotional content performed twice as better as those with only rational content.
The most effective way to connect emotionally with your ideal client is to tell stories.
Pillar 3: Nurturing
The last pillar of a successful non-diet marketing strategy is to create a relationship of trust and credibility with your ideal client. That’s because the vast majority of your future clients will be doubtful given their experience thus far with diet culture. I know I was…. You?
Inside the non-diet coaching certification mentorship program & The Good Money Mastermind, we refer to this step of the program the “Non-Diet Marketing Funnel”. Think a liquid funnel here…. it’s the journey your client will go through as they enter your world.
Although we as non-diet health professionals are very familiar with a weight-neutral approach to health, our future customer is not. We have to face the facts: we live in a society that is fatphobic and heavily entrenched in weight loss approaches. In other words, we are the infancy stage of a non-diet world…
Hence, we need to educate our future clients to the non-diet approach. With each new interaction with potential clients, we need to educate and educate some more. And when you think you are done educating… educate some more lol! Likewise, you need to move your ideal client along your non-diet marketing from not knowing about the non-diet approach to understanding the basics of the non-diet approach. This needs to happen before they commit (purchase) to anything with you.
As your ideal client moves further down into your non-diet funnel, they will start trusting you and see you as an expert in this approach. As a result, they will be more willing to take a risk with what seems to them as a “completely crazy” approach to their problem: to ditch dieting, learn to eat intuitively, and accept their body.
Non-Diet Business Coaching Training Center
Would you like to see an example of nurturing in the non-diet world? If not done yet, join my non-diet professional community by requesting our starter pack for training for intuitive eating. I’ll send you the nurturing funnel I have built for professionals.
We also have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.
Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Non-Diet Business Mentorship
The Good Money Business Mastermind is training program for an non-diet business and non-diet professional mentorship program. A business mentorship specifically designed and curated to support service provider in the anti-diet culture niche. Make good money helping people liberate themselves from diet & wellness culture!
This is what I was seeking but couldn’t find years ago.
Diet Mindset: How to unlearn diet culture thoughts
Diet mindset professional support to unlearn the diet culture thoughts training was not available when I started my transition to a non-diet approach to nutrition and health as a clinical nutritionist; had to figure it out on my own. Piece it all together…
In this podcast episode First Do No Harm: The Intuitive Eating Mentorship Journey I argued that the current model of practice for a nutrition professional top-down approach is causing more harm to a particular segment of our clients: women on the diet roller coster.
The solution: The bottom-up approach. Start first with addressing the diet mindset so we can move to coach nutrition and health later in the journey. Enter diet mindset professional training!
In this article, we will cover:
Diet Mindset Professional Training
Self-Coaching for Intuitive eating
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 3
Links mentioned in the episode…
Non-Diet Coaching Certification
Diet Mindset Professional Training
In my professional studies as a clinical nutritionist, we barely touched upon the psychology of eating or diet mindset professional training. We jumped right into the WHAT to eat emphasizing greatly why it was so important to our health with a lot of facts and data.
So, I went into private practice and model what I had learned. Spending hours creating a complex protocol. Very quickly, I realized that wasn’t going to work… clients were overwhelmed and scared of the complexity of what they would have to do. I went to what I was taught: trying to convince them with studies, facts, and data as to why restricting this and that food was essential to their health. That didn’t work either.
Why wasn’t it working? Back then, I had no answer but today after years of independent studies I can tell you why: intellectual knowledge is not what motivates humans to change or make different choices. Especially not with food. The answer diet mindset professional training.
How human make food choices
So, if data points and fear-mongering isn’t an effective tool to help people change their eating habits, what is?
Of course, the primary driver to food choices is hunger however, what we choose to eat is not only our physiological and nutritional needs. Many other factors influence our food choice according to research:
Biological Determinants
For example, our innate eating cues hunger, fullness, and satisfaction which is what is recognized as eating cues in the world of intuitive eating coaching. You can also include here Set Point theory which I discussed in depth with Chris Sandle on our Going Beyond The Food Show podcast series about weight loss.
Economic Determinants
In sum, here we can think of cost, income, availability of food which is truly out of our control as health practitioners. These are major issues with the newest version of diet culture: the Wellness Diet.
Physical Determinants
For example, access, education, skills (e.g. cooking skills), and time availability which are mostly out of our control as health practitioners.
Social Determinants
This aspect of our food choices such as culture, family, peers, and meal patterns are mostly out of reach for us as health practitioners except one that is particularly relevant to our segment of women who have been chronic dieters: weight discrimination.
There is emerging evidence that experiences with weight stigma may lead to different eating behavior. For example, individuals ate more food after exposure to a weight stigmatizing condition. Additionally, in a study, 79 percent of women reported coping with weight stigma on multiple occasions by eating more food.
A properly structured non-diet approach to health engages clients and patients in learning coping skills to help reduce the impact of weight stigma.
Psychological Determinants
This is the world of mind and emotions. Elements such as mood, stress, and guilt are one area that as non-diet health professionals should be included in our approach.
Today, it is widely recognized that food influences our mood, and that mood has a strong influence on our choice of food. For this reason, these determinants are the first 3 pillars of the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ .
Attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about food
This is where we include intellectual knowledge about food but also include all the constructed food beliefs pass down to us from the weight loss & wellness industries in order to sell their products.
How the diet mindset develops
What’s unique about our eating behaviors, unlike many other biological functions, is too often subject to sophisticated cognitive control.
We consciously manipulate our food choices beyond the need of our bodies to achieve other external gains/ goals in our life. One of the most widely practiced forms of cognitive control over food intake is dieting (cognitive dietary restraint).
In most studies on the topic of food choices, it’s most often observed that women and men behave differently with food. In this study, women reported significantly higher restraint, more guilt after eating in various types of social situations, and more overeating in reaction to unpleasant emotional state mood.
Women’s bodies are imposed on different beauty standards than men’s bodies. Diet Culture reinforces the thin ideals to women leading 91% of women in western societies to dislike their bodies and using dieting (cognitive food restraint) to meet diet culture expectations of their body size and beauty.
With repeated failed attempts at dieting, dieting has a 91%-95% failure rate over 5 years period, women’s brain & body develops coping mechanism as a mean of surviving diet failure and weight stigma. This is why we need diet mindset professional training!
Common thought errors or cognitive distortion
When it comes to how we think, the dieter’s brain adapts using what we know as cognitive distortion or thought errors.
Let’s take a step back first to make sure we all understand how the human brain functions.
When faced with an event or a trigger, labelled in the model below as circumstances then given an interpretation. This interpretation is based on our long-held beliefs, past experiences, values system including diet culture. We then form an opinion, a thought which then ignites an emotion. The emotions we feel then creates the actions or behaviours we take. The collective action we take then creates our result.
Cognitive Behavioral Coaching Model
Over time, the brain, or mind, adopts a “way of thinking” as a means to survive what we perceive as a difficult situation. These flaws in thinking are known as cognitive distortions or thought errors. This is what keeps women in the cycle of dieting and body shaming even though it has proven to be a very ineffective way of living life.
- Mental filtering
- Jumping to conclusions
- Personalization
- Black and white thinking
- Catastrophizing
- Overgeneralization
- Labelling
- Emotional reasoning
- Magnifying/ Minimizing
Over the years of working with women in a non-diet model of care approach, and my personal journey in recovering from 25 years dieting career, I have observed a pattern in cognitive distortion. I coined the term Diet Brain to better express this pattern.
Diet Mindset & Diet Brain
Diet brain, the term I coined a few years back, is the collective of 4-main thought errors. In my clinical observation and personal experience overcoming each one, this pattern that is present in most women chronic dieters I have worked. What are these traits?
All or nothing / Black and White thinking
This can be best described as the on the diet / off the diet lifestyle. The good and bad food dichotomy as dictated by diet culture. With time, it spread these faulty thought patterns to every aspect of our life: exercise, work, career, relationship, how we raised children….
Perfectionism
Simply put: Everything must be perfect to off so we can be worthy of love, acceptance. At first with diet, food, and exercise but as failure cumulated, it becomes a way of life to prevent potential rejection due to “unperfected body”.
This cognitive distortion leads to a perfectionist fantasy. We make our current life so miserable by thinking that solving your problem (aka body size and appearance) will provide us with the happiness we are seeking that we actually never live (and enjoy) our current life.
Mental filtering: It’s my body’s fault
The body and its size take the blame for everything that’s wrong in your life. From health to a relationship, to opportunity, to emotional state… it’s all the body’s fault. Women then consistently compare themselves with others based on beauty and body size.
People-pleasing
This is when women move to external validation because internal validation is absent. As they believe that they are unacceptable, they will attempt to please and comfort everyone around them as a means of avoiding rejection and gaining acceptance.
These four most common cognitive distortions most present with women chronic dieters then strongly influence their eating patterns, ability to practice self-care, and create health-promoting habits.
The non-diet approach will first help the client and the patient with their mindset and emotions before engaging in nutrition education. In our diet mindset professional training, we teach the framework of self-coaching.
Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
Self-Coaching is a framework that supports first becoming aware of our thought, observing them without judgment and last to change our thinking. It’s also an effective approach supported by neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.
We’ve developed a unique framework that supports the long-term goal of helping women recover from diet culture and become intuitive eater and body neutral. This is the best tool for diet mindset recovery for a professional approach. Self-coaching for intuitive eating is applied in 3 steps:
Step 1: Self-observation
The process of self-coaching cultivates the first skill which is about being an observer of our inner world – our thoughts and our emotions. This process helps raise the level of interception that clients will need as they begin to explore their innate eating cues with intuitive eating.
Step 2: Non-judgement
Self-coaching is about exploring your inner world with a “lense of curiosity” instead of judgment. Asking the question “I wonder why I think like this or do this” instead “I’m so stupid because I do this” is empowering and creates deep mental clarity. You can then decide how you want to think about X or what you want to do about Y.
Step 3: Conscious response
The last step of self-coaching is about choosing conscious responses or thoughts that work best for you and your specific situation, problem, or challenge. Self-coaching is ultimately about deciding consciously instead of reacting unconsciously.
Self-coaching as a thought in an intuitive eating mentorship program is about teaching our clients to connect to their innate wisdom and their power. It leads to emotional intelligence by taking charge of your mind and emotions.
That’s the feminist approach to food and health.
Get Started with Diet Mindset Unlearning Professional Training
We have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.
You can access the non-diet coaching professional training here:
Non-Diet Professional Mentorship
Our Non-Diet Coaching Certification is a high-level business mentorship program for health professionals who want to take their business to a non-diet model of care. This program includes diet mindset professional training.
A 6-month journey of business and personal growth exclusively designed for female health entrepreneurs mastering their own journey beyond the food with intuitive eating and body neutrality, while also learning to market their intuitive eating business with a heart so they can have a massive impact on women’s health.
Intuitive Eating Business
The thought of starting an intuitive eating business can be scary and overwhelming.
Even for those that currently have a health business and want to transition to a non-diet business is frightening. Will I be able to sustain my income?
How can I make money off if I’m not selling meal plans, diet programs, detoxes, and cleanse?
If I’m not creating complex protocols for my clients: why would they pay me?
These are the type of questions this article aims to answer and many others.
What is the business of intuitive eating?
Being an Intuitive Eating Coach
Intuitive Eating Coaching Outcome
Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business
First Step to start an intuitive eating business
What is a Non-Diet Mentorship program?
If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 2
Links mentioned on the episode
What’s an intuitive eating business?
An intuitive eating business is when you exchange money in order to support someone with intuitive eating. This support can come in many different ways:
- Teaching them an intuitive eating framework
- Coaching their learning or progress as an intuitive eater
- Supporting them in their intuitive eating journey
- Encouraging to move forward when they struggle
- Answering their questions
- Inspiring them to move forward in the face of adversity
- Creating products that will support people who want to become an intuitive eater
This business is not a formulated typical health business and does not hold the same value system considering that most health businesses are created to support diet culture ideology.
The most prevalent difference in a diet culture-free business resides in its approach to healing. An intuitive eating business is anchored in what I describe as a “bottom-up” approach versus a “top-down” approach. The goal is to empower you to become your own expert at your body. A typical health business that is rooted in diet culture is built around the provider being the expert and telling you how to engage with your body. Very disempowering.
An intuitive eating business is based on self-compassion, trust, respect of the individual innate body wisdom, and ability to heal themselves.
As of today, the most frequent intuitive eating business model is the coaching business model. You exchange money with your service as a coach.
Intuitive Eating Coach Business
As an intuitive eating coach, you are healing your client/ or patient… they heal themselves. Your clients/patients have all they need to heal their own relationship with food and body. For many, that’s a departure from their professional training… it’s ok to feel unsafe at first.
An intuitive eating coach is a health professional who guides clients/patients in their recovery from Diet Culture. Moreover, your job is to guide clients on the path of becoming an intuitive eater by listening to their concerns and helping them with problem-solving. Recognizing what we spoke about in the first episode of season 1 of Undiet Your Coaching Podcast, that the human relationship to food is by far more complex than just simple food choices.
Problem-solving with your client as an intuitive eating coach will not require you to provide a complex meal plan or macro ratio. Instead, helping them master their mindset particularly shifting away from diet mindset towards a compassionate mindset.
You will help your client move from an external cue to know what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat towards internal cues. As well as helping them feel their hunger, fullness and find satisfaction in what they eat. Instead of teaching your clients to suppress their cravings and how to “fill up on aid food”, you actually help them be in their body at the moment.
You help them understand that all food is good. That being healthy doesn’t mean being restrictive and feeling deprived. That they no longer need to earn their food. You empower your clients, give themselves permission to eat.
Intuitive Eating Coaching Outcome
Your goal is to coach your clients in building confidence in their own eating cues to be their own internal nutritionist. Instead of helping your client live a “normal life” in a very restrictive dietary protocol and how to make cauliflower brownie, you help your client give themselves permission to eat.
With compassion, you guide your client to cope with emotions differently. Helping them build resilience and emotional intelligence. Helping them learn to process their emotions without food.
As your clients build trust and respect with their innate body wisdom, you help them detach from being their bodies and their appearance. In addition, helping them reconnect to their innate worth as women. Guiding your client away from shame towards neutrality. Helping them embrace self-care beyond their physical bodies.
Finally, you help educate your client to a weight-neutral health approach guided by health at every size principle. Moving their body with joy and practicing gentle nutrition.
Being an effective intuitive eating coach requires you to be an intuitive eater first with a willingness to grow and learn from your clients. You must possess intuitive eating professional skills but also, mindset coaching skills, behaviour modification skills. Also, mindfulness and body image resilience skills.
Serving versus Selling
Let’s talk about what everyone thinks about but doesn’t want to talk about. It’s going to get uncomfortable for some…
It’s ok to be making money coaching intuitive eating, to exchange your coaching services for money. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be successful in your intuitive eating business. It’s ok to monetize your professional skills.
Ready for this one: The more revenue you create, the more money you make in your intuitive eating business means more people freed from diet culture. Yup, it truly is.
Now, how you monetize your services and create business revenue does matter. You can build a business in a masculine, patriarchal way or you can choose to embrace your female energy that empowers everyone even those who do not purchase from you.
You can serve instead of selling. Serving means engaging with our clients without expectation. You offer value by creating free content, teaching your audience the very basics of intuitive eating, providing free resources to everyone. You become a resource helping people break down their own barriers, fears, and supporting them with an empowering message. Guiding them to the next level resources available.
The opposite of serving is the hard sell, aggressive to close mentality that comes across as pushy and self- focused. When you are focus on selling, you create free resources guard to disempower people so they are led to believe that the only way for them or resolve their problem is by buying your product.
Serving is based on love. Selling is based on fear. Serving leads to selling without selling.
Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business
We must recognize that the intuitive eating model of nutrition is not accepted by the traditional model of healthcare. As a result, intuitive eating services are mostly never covered by traditional insurance providers. Our services are typically private care, meaning an out of the pocket expense.
This is why most intuitive eating professionals have to be entrepreneurs alongside their profession. You can provide service for someone else’s business but in most cases, you will need to be running your own business.
This means that you need to embrace entrepreneurship and learn about setting up and maintaining a business, marketing your intuitive eating business as well as getting and retaining clients.
Let’s make something clear here: a professional health certification isn’t how you will learn to run a business. The vast majority of health certifications do not include business training and if they do, it’s not focused on a non-diet business model but instead a model that supports diet culture.
That’s why I created the Non-Diet Coaching Certification program. If we want to be successful in dismantling diet culture, I need you to know how to successfully operate a business.
First Step to start an intuitive eating business
The first place to start is with a business strategy. That’s you creating a brand-new business of transitioning your current business to an intuitive eating business model, you need a business strategy.
The strategy is what will turn your passion into biz and blow you to impact thousands of women. It’s the roadmap you will look up to as you work day-to-day in your business. Your business strategy consists of the following:
- Why
- What
- Who
- Where
- When and the…
- How much
The first layer of your business strategy that we teach is the why… not the what. This is where most business strategies go wrong. The business you create needs to be in alignment with your personal values, your personal goals, and how YOU want to lead your personal life.
To be an effective heart-centred intuitive eating business owner, you must care for yourself first. Make sure your business supports YOU not the opposite.
Non-Diet Business Coaching
Today, I own and operate a very successful intuitive eating business. It’s not always been like this. In this first episode of the PRO Series podcast, I share the story of my own professional and business evolution.
It took time and resources for me to get where I’m today. For over 4 years, I searched and trained in various professional training programs to create the Going Beyond The Food Method. I shared more on this in this podcast episode.
Although I had 15 years of retail business operation experience, I also had to learn the health business model. I had to educate myself, get coached in my blind spot, be mentored. Over the last 10 years, I invested approximately $60,000 in my business.
- I hired an experienced nutrition business coach before even graduating -8K
- The year following my graduation, I committed my first health business mastermind -10K
- 4 years ago, I hired an online business coach to help me transition my business online – 10K
- Over the next years, I have purchased 26k in online business skills courses to learn email marketing, funnel, summit, branding, etc…
Non-Diet Coaching Certification Program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best intuitive eating professional. It’s a program geared to refine your professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.
It helps you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.
I believe that the only way for us to be able to end diet culture oppression of women is by us women coming together and helping each other as women back into our power via intuitive eating and body neutrality. This is a woman issue…that must be resolved by women.
As women, we need to step up and change the future for the young generation of girls. We need to teach them that they aren’t defined by their bodies, we need to crush DC so it never gets its dirty hands on the upcoming generation.
The liberation of the upcoming generation will only come through our generation’s liberation from diet culture and patriarchy.
Currently, the traditional model of nutrition, coaching, and even health care is not set-up for this…it’s entrenched in diet culture. Most of the wellness industry is deeply entrenched in diet culture. The alternative health industry claims to be about the root cause… but never looked at the reason why women engage with food and body.
Bottom line we need a new approach
We need women who can help other women change their relationship to food and body, empowering women to become their own experts at their bodies, to help women build confidence in themselves and their power to know what’s right for them.
Women who will support other women. We need emphatic, compassionate women who have the skills to connect with other women and a passion for change.
My job is to ensure these women are doing their job so well while creating a sustainable business so they can keep impacting more women for years to come. Furthermore, my job is to ensure that these women are successful so they crush diet culture for the generations to come.
Ready to get started building an Intuitive Eating Business?
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve :
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Good Money Business Mastermind A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it!
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
Welcome!
I’m Stephanie Dodier
Non-Diet Nutritionist & Coach
I teach and coach women how to break free from the socialized thinking of diet culture and liberate yourself from unrelenting pressure to be thinner so that you can eat in a way that truly supports your well-being and start living the life you’ll look back on with no regrets.
Join me in leading the feminist health coaching revolution!
Ready? Let's do this!
FREE QUIZ & GUIDE
Let's see just how much diet culture has a grip on you
I curated 3 questionnaires to evaluate your body image, eating behaviours and mindset to see if you have been just how much your life has been impacted by diet culture.
Get ready to completely change the way you look at health?
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY TODAY AND RECEIVE OUR NEWSLETTER!
