People who have had food and weight obsession… just wanted to be responsible.

We just wanted to be on top of things.

We just wanted to be loved. Safe. Healthy.

In a world that tells you that you are lazy and gross and unhealthy if you don’t keep your weight and eating under control? We just wanted to do it right — and do it well.

This was our way to feel like we were in control of our own destiny. Productive. Successful. Able.

We were led to believe that controlling our food and calories and weight was healthy – so why wouldn’t we try?

This world is priming you to get obsessed, and then to feel ashamed if and when it all backfires.

Don’t be angry with yourself for being fooled. Don’t be angry with yourself for focusing on the wrong thing for too long. Be angry with a society that leads you to believe that you are not worthy or responsible if you aren’t obsessed over your food and weight.

Because you will not get very far if you try to embark on TFID while you are angry with yourself.

(Also, diets do not work and your body is wired to backfire against them.)

Today I simply want to give a nod to the different people and teachers who have shaped the way I talk about food, body, and spirituality.

Linda Bacon. Linda bacon is the weight researcher and author of the books Health at Every Size and Body Respect (co-written with Lucy Aphramor). Her work is essential in the journey of untangling weight from health. Read Linda’s books, and listen my podcast episode where we chatted.

Byron Katie. Byron Katie has this strange mixture of detached coolness and deep compassion, only found in a woman who had a spiritual awakening while lying on the floor because she didn’t think she deserved a bed, and a cockroach walked on her foot. Reading her book Loving What Is a few years ago started the process of examining my thoughts and beliefs. What if the things I think and believe are not true? What if they are the cause of my cascading misery and anxiety? Her way of looking at our thoughts is radical and really liberating, though I don’t think it’s as easy as she makes it seem. That’s what I do energy work for: helping to process the emotions attached to those thoughts.

Pema Chodron. Her book Comfortable with Uncertainty.

Julia Cameron and The Artist’s Way. Changed the way I look at perfectionism, creativity as a healing and spiritual force, and basically just changed my life, hands down.

Alexis Saloutos. She is my energy-work-teacher-turned-friend, and her way of teaching grounding and awareness of “where your energy is” made so many lightbulbs go off for me. She is the goddess of the magical pendulum and teacher of many wonderful energy work trainings.

A lot of these lightbulbs have been integrated into my own Fuckiteer Academy and Become Your Own Damn Guru, explaining “what our energy does” when we are afraid of food and weight.

Lena Dunham. Revolutionary Body Representation on TV.

Virgie Tovar. Revolutionary Body Representation and activism.

Isabel Foxen Duke. Isabel is an amazing peer doing very similar work. She coined the term “emotional restriction” which gives a name to that cyclical fear of “the next diet” that’ll keep you stuck with your eating. She is one of the only people I am 100% comfortable with sharing their course (btw, check our her free video series. Seriously).

Christy Harrison. Her Food Psych podcast is excellent. And she is a Health at Every Size nutritionist. Boom.

**

There are more, I am sure. And I will add to this list when I see fit and remember. But these are really great places to start checking out people who either inspired or guided the direction and course of all that makes up The Fuck It Diet.