What is grey zone thinking in non-diet coaching and why does it matter?

Grey zone thinking, also called nuanced thinking, is the cognitive capacity to hold two truths at the same time without collapsing them into a binary. In non-diet coaching, it is considered the foundational skill required for food peace and sustainable body image healing.

The opposite of grey zone thinking is binary or all-or-nothing thinking, which is one of the most common cognitive distortions seen in people who have spent time in diet culture. Binary thinking shows up as an irrational but automatic thought pattern where food, bodies, and behaviors are sorted into categories of good or bad, right or wrong, safe or unsafe. It is a survival mechanism the brain uses when it perceives threat or discomfort, not a character flaw.

Grey zone thinking matters because the two most common goals in non-diet work, gentle nutrition and body image healing, both require the ability to hold nuance. Gentle nutrition is not a list of approved foods. It is a dynamic practice of combining body cues with nutritional knowledge simultaneously. Body image healing is not a linear progression from self-hate to self-love. It is the development of a wider tolerance for different body experiences over time. Neither outcome is possible from inside a binary mindset.

In Cognitive Behavioral Coaching, building grey zone thinking involves three steps: separating facts from thoughts, developing interoceptive awareness so the body becomes a source of information rather than a problem to manage, and tracing the behavior chain to identify whether current thinking patterns are producing the desired outcomes. Cognitive restructuring then creates new neural pathways. Critically, this process requires both cognitive and somatic work. Safety in the nervous system is not optional. It is the mechanism through which the brain is willing to rewire. Self-compassion is the clinical ingredient that makes that safety possible.

Transcript 

[00:00:00] Welcome to It’s Beyond the Food Podcast, my sisters. I’m your host, Stephanie Dodier, non-diet nutritionist, cognitive behavior coach, and founder of the non-diet coaching certification. And today we’re gonna deep dive into what I call the gray zone, otherwise known as nuanced thinking.

And I love this topic because it is the work that actually has the power to change a lot of things. The space where we land ourselves, where we have no rules to follow, where the goal we’re chasing is in the gray zone. It is messy. It is nuance. It is both things can be true at the same time. And honestly, that’s where food and body image peace live. That’s where the real body image work happens. If you’ve listened to my most recent podcast episode called Body Image Perfectionism, the solution to body image perfectionism is in part nuanced thinking. So, you ready for this? Let’s see how we can develop more nuanced thinking.

[00:02:00] Now, before we dive deep into this, I wanna talk to you about something that’s happening in my life right now, which is a great example of nuanced thinking. As some of you know, I’m a digital nomad, so I travel a lot while I’m working, and I’ve been back from Mexico for a few weeks now, almost four weeks.

And since I’ve returned home, something has felt off. Not necessarily physically, but mentally and emotionally. I had a lot more anxiety than I normally have, and things weren’t well. Still not working out the way I’m hoping for, specifically in the context of how I’m feeling in my emotional health, but also in my business.

[00:03:00] And on Saturday, April the 25th, I was scrolling through my Instagram and an astrologist appeared in my feed. I usually don’t follow astrologists on Instagram, but this woman appeared, and she was talking about a very powerful period for Aquarius. I am an Aquarius, and she said it’s one of the most significant periods of change in the Aquarius life over the last seven years because of two things: how Uranus is moving and shifting, and also because there is a full moon on April the 30th. And as I was listening to that, I’m like, oh my God, this is what’s happening in my life right now.

[00:04:00] Now I am a scientist at heart. I believe in science, and I know that there is no substantial evidence on astrology, so I’m typically not guided to make choices based on astrology. But I’m entertained sometimes with astrology, and this was one of those moments. And I want you to notice the way that I’m talking about astrology. I’m not talking about it as if it’s good or bad. I’m able to live in the gray zone with astrology, meaning I know there’s no science around it, and I’m a scientist. And I do believe in spirituality, that there’s a higher thing, a being up there, something that drives the universe. And sometimes I take into consideration what astrology has to tell me and sometimes not.

[00:05:00] I have both sides of it in that space. So there’s a lot of things happening in my life right now. I’m recording this on April 29th. The full moon is tomorrow. Let’s see what happens. It’s supposed to be a momentous shift as the full moon happens.

Now let’s talk about nuanced thinking. That was a great example of it. I want to deep dive into real application in our particular niche, which is weight-neutral health. And my desire to speak about this came from a coaching session that I had earlier this week with a new client.

[00:06:00] This person is a life coach and she’s also a certified intuitive eating counselor. She’s done the certification, she knows the framework. She’s done a level of personal work as well, but she’s coming in to work with me because she’s still struggling at the later stage of intuitive eating with her relationship to food, and she’s deeply afraid of gaining weight. She came to me because she believed that somewhere somehow there has to be a way to eat that will prevent her from gaining weight, even though she understands health at every size. It’s still that belief that she’s holding within her.

[00:07:00] So this week was our second session together, and very quickly we figured out the core issue. And I wanna say we, because when I work with people from a coaching perspective, specifically in a more intimate container, this is a small group coaching container with only four people, we go into a mode of a collaborative relationship. It’s not me telling her what to do. It’s us together, working through finding the solution within her. And very quickly we got to this place where it was evident that the dominant cognitive distortion for her was the all-or-nothing thinking. The black or white thinking, also known as binary thinking.

[00:08:00] And she could not see how there was no right way or healthy way of eating that would come out of gentle nutrition. That’s where we started. We started with gentle nutrition, and then we peeled the onion and realized that the reason she was so desperately looking for the healthy way of eating without being diet culture was because she was deeply afraid of gaining more weight than she had gained already. And the solution to the space where she finds herself is developing this ability to live in the nuance, in the gray, and being able to leave out that binary thinking.

So let’s talk about this. Nuanced thinking is the opposite of the right or the wrong way of thinking. It’s the ability to hold two truths at the same time.

[00:09:00] When you think about gentle nutrition, it is the perfect example of this, or my astrology example at the top. It’s the combination of your eating cues, your ability to trust your body, and holding some nutritional intellectual information at the same time. It’s both combined. And being able to live in that middle space of two existing truths at the same time: we need to trust our body, and there is some nutritional knowledge that is better for the human body.

[00:10:00] And this is why for most people, they get to the step of gentle nutrition and they struggle. And then they’ll go on social media or they’ll come into your practice and they’ll say, well, intuitive eating doesn’t work for me. Right? Like I’m special and unique. It doesn’t work for me. So what else? Or they’ll make a broad statement. We all know those accounts on social media: intuitive eating doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because of the gray zone. And it’s the same thing with body image. I did that recently in the body image perfectionism episode where I drilled down on that.

Now, why does a non-nuanced thinking pattern happen? Why do we tend to go to this binary way of thinking? I have a great analogy that I give all my clients. I’m gonna give it to you. And if you’re watching me on YouTube right now, you saw that I took off my glasses.

[00:11:00] Black or white thinking is what we know in cognitive behavior coaching as a cognitive distortion. It’s an irrational thought pattern, a thinking pattern that emerges when people feel unsafe. When your brain sees danger, when the brain sees discomfort, when the brain sees things are going to change, there’s risk. The way that your brain helps to protect you is a survival mechanism. It engages in what is known as cognitive distortion. There are, I think, 17 of them, and there may be more based on updated research, but I know of 17 for sure. And all-or-nothing thinking is one of the most common ones that I see in my practice.

[00:12:00] So back to my glasses. Cognitive distortion is like a pair of glasses you put on every morning that distort the reality, that distort the view that you have on the world, either in particular circumstances or generally in the way you view life. All-or-nothing thinking, in my opinion and in my clinical experience, is very frequent with women particularly who have been in diet culture for periods of time. And my observation is the longer people have been in diet culture, the more ingrained that cognitive distortion is, the more of a survival mechanism people have when they feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

[00:13:00] And why does that happen? I wanna explain that very specifically. Why do people who believe that thinner is better, that there’s a right way of eating, why do they go to all-or-nothing? Because that’s the doctrine of systems of oppression in general. So we’re gonna go up a little bit here. I want you to think of all systems of oppression. Diet culture and wellness culture is one of them. Fatphobia is another one of them. Racism is another one of them. Ableism, right? The doctrine of systems of oppression is having a right way of being, a right way of doing things. So diet culture says the right way of being for women is to be thin.

[00:14:00] The wellness culture will say the right way of eating right now is fiber-maxing in 2026. One of the differences between wellness culture and diet culture is the flexibility of wellness culture to make more money, because wellness culture drives capitalism. It changes tune. With diet culture, thinner is better. And we’re seeing that right now with the whole GLP-1 era. We’re back to extremely thin again. It was in the nineties. Thirty years later, we’re back at it again. Wellness culture, for the last five years it’s been fiber-maxing. Five years ago it was protein-maxing. In the eighties it was no fat. So wellness culture tends to change things. But the commonality is there’s a right way of eating, there’s a right way of having a body, and that’s what makes systems of oppression.

[00:15:00] And then it forces people through social structure to be in the right group, and to value and to assign morality to people based on which group they belong to. So people who have been in wellness culture and diet culture have this view of the world, and they’ve been practicing it for a long time. Diet culture says to women: if you eat the right way, you will be thin and you’ll be good enough. And if you are not successful at it, because it’s totally controllable, if you’re not successful at it, it’s because you’re not doing it right. Even though there are amounts of literature that says dieting doesn’t work, even though it doesn’t work for 95% of people, even though it didn’t work for you for the last 20 years, it’s because you’re not doing it right, because it works.

[00:16:00] So women who have lived in that trauma, that experience that’s very traumatic because it’s your sense of being, it’s your sense of worth. They’ve been robbed of their sense of worth, most of them for decades. They’re going to see their relationship to food and body in binary, because this whole time they were told if you did it right, if only you did it right, it would’ve worked. So yeah, they’re stuck in perfectionism and all-or-nothing.

So when they unwind diet culture and wellness culture and the thin ideal, one of the things that’s most frequently in the way of recovering from that is their mindset, their collection of thoughts and thinking patterns, one of them being binary thinking.

[00:17:00] So you have to work at that level, whether it is you personally or you as a professional. You have to be able to see it. You have to be able to name it. And you have to know how to change it. And the number one error that I see being done, and many of you will recognize yourself in this, is that people say, yeah, I can see that I am in this black and white thinking. And the solution to get me out of this will be to bring more facts, more science, to read more books, to listen to more podcasts. And that’s gonna convince my brain to let go of binary thinking. And maybe you’re listening to this podcast episode in the pursuit of changing your mindset and thinking, well, so I listen to just one more podcast and then my brain’s gonna change.

[00:18:00] Here’s my question for you, which is the same question I asked my client. My client went to the extent of paying for the certified intuitive eating counselor certification. I don’t know how much it is now, but probably in my time it was around $1,500. She went to the extent of doing that, trying to prove to her brain that she needed to let go of that. It didn’t work, because she ended up working with me. Has it worked for you? If you are here because of that, listening to this podcast, trying to bring more intellectual knowledge to try to motivate your brain to change, has it worked?

I’m not gonna answer that. You find the answer for yourself.

[00:19:00] So how do we go about changing that? The first thing I want to say is stick with the metaphor of the glasses. I want you to think of that cognitive distortion as the glasses you’ve put onto your face and you’re seeing the world. And the reason why I use this analogy and it’s so potent: you can take them off. It’s this visual encapsulation of transformation, where it’s just a pair of glasses. With the right approach, I will be able to remove it, and in time I’ll be able to pick up a new pair of glasses called nuanced thinking or gray zone thinking.

[00:20:00] The first place we need to go, and this approach is the same whether you are a health professional or someone on their personal journey. Imagine the glasses. Second thing: look at the circumstance that you want to change your view of. So we’ll take food. My goal is to become an intuitive eater. I wanna go back to eating normally. Okay, great. So the first thing is recognize that currently the reason why you are not an intuitive eater is because you’re thinking about food in a binary view, and that’s a pair of glasses you can remove.

The second thing: let’s take a particular example around food. Sugar is bad. Recognize that that is not a fact. Separate facts from thoughts because they’re not the same.

[00:21:00] Now we’re gonna get into the trenches of cognitive behavior coaching. Sugar exists. Sugar is bad is a thought. Sugar exists is a fact. Is it intrinsically bad? No. So sugar exists is a fact. Sugar is bad is a thought. Recognizing that my current thinking around sugar is optional. Two: go into your body. Now this is the tripping point for many people. When I say get into the body, feel your nervous system and determine: when I think that sugar is bad, how does that make me feel in my body? Being able to label the sensation in your body, being able to name the emotion that results from your binary thinking.

[00:22:00] Step three: once you’ve identified the sensation, named the emotion, ask yourself: when I think that sugar is bad and it makes me feel anxious, how do I respond to that emotion of anxiety? How do I behave in response to that emotion? What is my behavior around food as a result of me thinking sugar is bad? And then the next step: does that behavior allow me to get to the result that I want?

[00:23:00] So for example, we’ll go back to sugar. I wanna become a normal eater, but I’m currently thinking sugar is bad. That makes me feel anxious. And that creates eating sugar out of control, constantly thinking about sugar, constantly wanting sugar, and when I finally get sugar, eating it in enormous quantity. Does that align me to my goal of becoming a normal eater?

Now, because I’m a gray zone thinker through years of practice, I’m not gonna say nope. This is not a place where binary thinking is useful, even for me as a teacher. Let’s just see. Is it possible to be a normal eater and thinking sugar is bad? Is it possible? Yeah, everything is possible. However, based on research and evidence, restrictive eating and restrictive thinking around food has demonstrated a high correlation and a high risk of disordered eating.

[00:24:00] So is it possible? Yeah. But 95% of people will have a disordered relationship to sugar by thinking sugar is bad. The question is: have you tried it? How long have you been trying to think that sugar is bad? Has it worked for you? When I ask those questions to the client, they’re like, well, that’s why I’m here. And I’m like, okay. So it’s not working for you. And it’s not like you’ve only been trying it for two weeks. You’ve been thinking that for 10, 15 years. It hasn’t worked.

I mean, you can continue to think that and let’s see if it works. But if you’re here and you wanna change, what if we change that perspective? What if we change that thinking? That’s called cognitive restructuring. When we find an alternative way of thinking, and then we build that new neural pathway in our brain.

[00:25:00] Because currently your brain is wired to think, when it sees sugar: sugar is bad. That’s a cognitive pathway in your brain. We’re gonna have to create a new cognitive pathway. And then we’re gonna have to train our brain to think that new way of thinking. And this is the other caveat to nuanced thinking. Remember I said at the beginning the reason why her brain thinks in binary is because it creates a certain level of safety in our body when things become unsafe. And that’s the caveat here. We have to not only train our brain to think differently, but also couple that with creating safety in our body for thinking differently. So it’s both a cognitive experience and a somatic experience in our body that will result in a new neural pathway being created. We cannot separate the two.

[00:26:00] So if you’re struggling with all-or-nothing thinking and you’ve been trying to change it, it’s likely because you haven’t brought your body on board. You haven’t made it as much of a somatic experience as a cognitive experience. That is usually the last piece we need to bring on board. Now this is emotional intelligence. This is nervous system regulation work, which is outside of the scope of this podcast episode today.

A great way to get started with my resources is to download the non-diet coaching assessment tool. It’s a free tool, my freebie. And inside of it, there is one assessment on mindset.

[00:27:00] I would say go do this assessment and determine where your mindset lands, and determine if potentially this is why you’re struggling with intuitive eating, gentle nutrition, and body image. Then follow the steps I just outlined with you. Go through the feed and find podcast episodes where I talk about emotional intelligence and nervous system regulation and find some tools there. And then if you wanna work with me on this, this is where The Groundwork lands, if you wanna learn to do this on your own. And then if you wanna make this your profession, that would be the non-diet coaching certification.

So thank you for being here with me today. I love you, my sister, and I’ll see you on the next podcast episode.