I used to be a compulsive dieter and emotional eater - and I was 20kg overweight. I guess you could say healthy eating never came easily for me.

My husband sneezes and practically sheds kilos but my body fights against weight loss, holding onto excess fat like moss to a wall. Some people forget to eat, whereas I’m the type to plan what I’m having for dinner whilst still eating my lunch! 

I’d always had a ‘weight problem’, even as a little girl. I was just five years old when I first thought I was ‘too big’. While other girls seemed to have straight-up-and-down bodies, I had a little tummy and thighs that touched. By the time I hit 11, I'd heard the phrase "you'd be so pretty if you lost weight" so often that it started to feel like my mantra. 

So I began dieting. Trying to help me, my parents took me to a nutritionist. The nutritionist understood my request: I wanted to be thin – and she was willing to help me subscribe to this ideal. She put me on a meal plan, which she pinky-promised wasn’t a diet (even though it certainly was) instructing me to weigh out my food. Ha! There was no conversation about body image, about what it actually means to be healthy, or warnings about how dieters are significantly more likely to become overweight or obese and develop an eating disorder. 

So, picture this: my first dive into the world of prescriptive ‘healthy eating’ was basically a crash course in restriction. A diet in disguise. I went to bed at night with a calorie-counting book, calculating whether or not I’d been ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that day. When I lost weight, I was elated and super proud. But when I didn’t lose weight, I felt a sense of failure. And sure enough, with time, the diets I stuck to so conscientiously stopped being effective. I ate what I was supposed to but I stopped losing weight. 

‘I’ve been so good this week,’ I told my group leader at our public weigh-in, after meticulously tracking points and sticking to ‘free’ foods all week to dull the intense hunger pangs. ‘Well, you must have cheated,’ she told me in front of the whole group. ‘The scales don’t lie.’ I somehow managed not to burst into tears until after I got into the car, the shame hot inside me. I was 14 years old.

Soon after, I started binge eating. While I was willing to calorie-control (AKA starve) my way to weigh less, my body had an inbuilt protective mechanism to keep me from self-sacrificing. Like people panic buying during Covid, my body feared there was a famine. So when I finally got access to food, I felt compelled to uncontrollably eat as much as I could. A frenzy of trying to fill that hole, that gap, that needed to be fed. 

I gained weight quickly. I felt like such a disappointment, ashamed of my lack of control around food. By now my relationship with food was on rocky ground. Unhealthy and disordered. My ballooning weight was seen to be the real problem. And heartbreakingly, the harder I tried to lose weight, the more I ended up secretly bingeing on bowls of cereal, loaves of bread or peanut butter by the spoonful (which was always followed by crushing guilt and girl-scout promises to do better tomorrow).

When it came to binge eating, my body didn’t discriminate. I’d devour ‘forbidden’ foods like cookies-and-cream ice cream straight from the tub just as readily as I’d gorge on healthy foods like cucumbers, berries or yoghurt. My body craved the things I was depriving it of. Calories. Food. Energy! The more I emotionally ate, the harder I dieted to regain control. But that just trapped me in an unbreakable cycle of yo-yo dieting, being good all week, then binging on weekends, only to start a new diet each Monday.

The more weight I gained, the more my dieting was encouraged, which only put my weight goals further out of reach. I knew what I ‘should’ be eating, but why couldn’t I stick to it? It turns out there wasn’t anything wrong with my self-control. And there’s nothing wrong with yours either.

When I finally ditched dieting - getting rid of all those conflicting (and unhelpful) diet rules, using my hunger and not a rigid meal plan to determine what to eat, I surprised myself by losing 20kg. The very thing I had chased for all those years was the unintentional result of creating a healthy relationship with food, where daily sugar intake didn’t take up my precious headspace. 

Here’s the thing. At first, my decision to stop dieting was daunting. What if I gain even more weight? What if I can’t stop eating and feel even more out of control? What blew me away was how - with the right principles - the exact opposite happened. 

Once I gave myself permission to eat, I realised that there was no shortage of food. For the first time in years, I could stop at just one cookie – naturally! I stopped punishing myself with gruelling exercises (which I hated!) and started moving my body for enjoyment – even if I didn’t burn 500 calories a session. 

For the first time in my life, I felt ‘normal’ around food. I took back control, no longer diving into the pantry every afternoon. No longer secret eating. 

At the same time, I started to adopt simple, healthy lifestyle changes. I began walking to the shops to buy groceries instead of driving. And when this change became effortless, I reduced the sugar in my coffee to one teaspoon, then half, and finally none. Because the scale wasn’t dictating my progress any more I continued to maintain these healthy changes for years and years. 

It took me over three years to lose 20kg, but considering I never have to lose that weight again – it was a small time investment to make. 

Chances are, you’ve tried countless diets. No one can say you haven’t tried! You’ve drunk shakes in place of actual meals. At times, you’ve even felt guilty for eating a whole banana or an entire sandwich! You’ve diligently recorded everything you eat in a diary or app. And you’ve also pretended it was the dog who made those outrageously sour farts when, in fact, the smell came from your bum after eating too much of that weird protein powder stuff.

The real issue is that you’re stuck in the murky, contaminated waters of diet burnout. Each diet attempt has been less effective. You may be gaining weight with each failed attempt. This is exactly what happened to me. When I was finally brave enough to leave dieting behind, I lost weight. So what if your weight isn’t the problem you’ve been told it is? And fixating on it is making it harder to eat healthily, to find your ‘happy weight’, to move your body with enjoyment and to like what you see in the mirror.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve wasted too much time, money and energy buying diet books and programs that have failed me. Working on your relationship with food isn’t a quick fix either. If, like me, you’ve been dieting for years (or maybe even decades like many of my clients), it’s going to take more than a 12-week challenge to rejig your thinking and transform your life.

But you can be healthy without sacrificing 95 per cent of your life to weigh five per cent less. What you need is the right techniques and support to learn how to free yourself of the diet rules that are leading to weight gain. 

Lyndi Cohen is a dietitian and best-selling author and is known for calling out nutrition nonsense, challenging diet culture and promoting healthy body image. You can follow her on Instagram here, visit her here, or join her Binge Free Academy.