Beyond Diet Culture
Diet culture — the pervasive set of beliefs that thin bodies are better and that achieving thinness through food restriction is both possible and desirable — has caused significant harm to millions of women. Body positive nutrition starts from a different foundation: food is nourishment, pleasure, culture, and connection; your body is not a problem to be solved through what you eat; and a sustainable relationship with food is one that involves neither restriction nor guilt.
Intuitive Eating Principles
Intuitive eating, developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, provides a research-backed framework for a healthy relationship with food that does not rely on restriction or calorie counting. The core principles include: eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied; rejecting the diet mentality; making peace with all foods by removing the forbidden/permitted binary; and honouring your body by eating in ways that make you feel good. For BBW women who may have a long history with diet culture, practising these principles often benefits from support from a non-diet registered dietitian.
Practical Nutritional Self-Care
Practical nutrition for fuller-figured women, outside of diet culture: eating regular meals rather than skipping meals, which tends to produce overeating and energy crashes; including adequate protein at each meal, which supports satiety and muscle maintenance; staying hydrated throughout the day; and eating a wide variety of foods, including both nutritionally dense options and the foods you find genuinely pleasurable. The goal is a relationship with food that supports wellbeing rather than controlling or punishing the body.
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Frequently Asked Questions
A research-backed framework for a healthy relationship with food developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. It involves eating based on hunger and satisfaction cues rather than external rules, rejecting diet mentality, and making peace with all foods.
Health research increasingly supports that health behaviours — physical activity, nutrition quality, sleep, stress management — are more strongly associated with health outcomes than body weight alone. Weight loss is not a prerequisite for improved health outcomes from positive health behaviour changes.
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