Food should be joyful and fun!
If you've been dieting for a long time, thinking about food is probably the opposite of fun. There are so many rules and ideas in your head about what you should and shouldn't eat. The foundation of Intuitive Eating is the idea that there are no bad foods (and no bad bodies!). In this program, you'll learn how to approach food completely differently. In doing so you, will reclaim a fun and rewarding relationship with food.
About Me
Hello and Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here. If you’ve found my work, I imagine that you’re looking for a way to change your relationship with food and with your body. Maybe you’ve been dieting and restricting for a long time, and you still don’t feel good about your body. Or maybe you’ve been trying to work on your relationship with food, but you keep hitting roadblocks. Learning to eat intuitively is a process, but it is absolutely possible for you to learn the skills you need to feel free around food. You are in the right place!
My name is Dr. Diana Gordon, and I am a psychologist, coach, and content creator that specializes in teaching people to ditch dieting and live a life of food freedom. As a psychologist, I have more than a decade of training and clinical experience working with people eating concerns, disordered eating, and eating disorders. In addition to my experience working with eating related concerns, I am an expert in evidence-based and skills-based psychotherapies, including CBT, DBT, ACT, and mindfulness. I am a certified Intuitive Eating counselor and my approach to teaching Intuitive Eating is based on the 10-Principle Intuitive Eating program developed by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole.
My teaching and my work is informed by a Health at Every Size and Fat Liberation perspective. I believe that all bodies are good bodies, and that all people should be treated with dignity and respect. I believe that health is about a lot more than a number on a scale. I also believe that diets set us up for failure by making us think there is something wrong with our bodies, while at the same time actively undermining our health and well-being. The reality is that 95% of dieters regain the lost weight, so it’s clear that dieting and shrinking our bodies doesn’t work. No matter what size your body is now, my program is a safe space for you, free from weight stigma and anti-fat bias.Â
As a person living in a larger body, I bring a unique perspective to teaching Intuitive Eating. I understand how challenging it can be to want to stop dieting, but to also be living in a body that is larger than what you want. It’s not as easy as just accepting yourself- you also have to contend with weight stigma from friends, family, and medical providers. Even those in straight-sized bodies are harmed by weight stigma, because we are all held to completely unrealistic beauty standards that are fat phobic in nature.
My program not only addresses your relationship with food, it also addresses your relationship with your body and empowers you to live authentically in your body at any size. In my experience working with a broad variety of mental health concerns, I have learned that our relationship with food and with our bodies is complex and requires a multi-faceted approach. Simply talking about food and movement is often not enough to help people really find ease in their relationship with food. We have spent our entire lives learning things about food and our bodies that are not true, and unlearning this requires both education and new skills.
My approach to teaching Intuitive Eating is unique because I incorporate my knowledge of important evidence based skills into my teaching of each principle. By introducing these evidence-based skills, I help you get a deeper understanding of each principle and give you the tools you need to see real changes in your relationship with food.
About This Course
This is a self-paced, 6 week course. Each week contains an average of 3 hours of audio lessons, written lessons, worksheets, exercises, journal prompts and additional resources. Of course, you are welcome to space out the course content over a longer period of time if that works better for you.Â
In the first week of the program, you will learn evidence-based information about dieting and why dieting doesn’t work. You will learn about the relationship between dieting and oppression, and about how diets are based on beauty standards that are patriarchal and racist. We will think together about what it would be like to break free from dieting, and how this can impact not only our own well-being but the people around us. In this part of the course, we also spend time talking about how challenging it is to leave behind the hope of losing weight. Rather than shaming or blaming ourselves for wanting to be smaller, it’s essential to acknowledge the very real challenges of living in this world in a marginalized body. People all across the size spectrum experience pressure to be smaller, and the desire to be smaller is a natural reaction to this pressure. Rather than pretending that desire doesn’t exist, we instead learn some specific skills to help you work through these very real concerns.Â
As the course progresses, we begin addressing the emotional component of our relationship with food and our overall emotional health. This is so essential because so much of our relationship with food is impacted by our emotions. You’ll learn to become more mindful, more self-compassionate, and more aware of your emotional experience.Â
In the next stage of the program, we start to explore our thoughts about food and movement, as well as our behaviors. We start to think about ways of changing some of our negative beliefs about food and about our bodies, and we learn how to identify and cope with situations that make us feel out of control around food. We also spend some time getting back in touch with our body’s signals of hunger and fullness and learning about the unique ways that our bodies communicate their needs to us. And finally, we work on cultivating self-compassion for ourselves and respect for our bodies, while also learning to set boundaries with people in our lives who might not agree with our new approach to food and our bodies.Â
In the final part of the program, we look at reintroducing two concepts that can be very difficult for people who have a long term dieting history: movement and gentle nutrition. I always start off by saying that truly, these parts of the program are 100% optional. You may not be ready to incorporate these suggestions into your life, and that is totally ok. Your healing of your relationship with food is going to come on your own timeline, and it’s OK if you don’t feel ready. But if you do, I will share a little bit about basic gentle nutrition principles. The operative term is gentle- if it feels strict or rigid, it’s too diet-y. I also share a little bit about different types of movement and encourage you to find the types that feel best in your body. Movement should never stress or tax us.Â
Through my unique approach to teaching Intuitive Eating, you’ll walk away with a new understanding of the principles as well as a set of skills that you can use throughout your life to manage your emotions and your relationship with food and with your body.Â