After recently learning that a family member was suffering from an eating disorder, I read Intuitive Eating, aka “The Gold Standard For a Healthy Relationship with Food.” I really appreciated the no-nonsense advice and wanted to summarize its 10, medically backed strategies for a sustainable diet:

1. Reject dieting (no counting calories)
2. Honor hunger (it knows the right amount)
3. Make peace with food (give yourself unconditional permission to eat)
4. Challenge the food police (ie “protein is the best food group”)
5. Feel your fullness (listen and ask yourself if you are comfortably full)
6. Discover the satisfaction of eating (which naturally causes us to eat less)
7. Cope with your feelings without using food (stay away from food until feeling is managed)
8. Respect your body (get rid of scale, don’t be overly critical about its shape)
9. Exercise: feel the difference (focus on how you feel working out, not calorie burning)
10. Honor your health with gentle nutrition (make food choices that make you feel well—it’s what you eat over time that matters.)

Brilliant!