The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.
I used to find Claire Sweeney likeable. Not so after watching My Big Fat Diet tonight at 9pm on ITV. I could only watch some of it as I found myself getting very upset. Not only was the programme really obvious propaganda for the diet industry and a disgusting display of hatred against anyone who is anything but the 'ideal' shape and size but the part I saw was choc full of misinformation and hearsay told as if it is scientific and medical fact.
Anyone with a body shape above a size zero would have been coerced by this programme into feeling at best dissatisfied with their shape and at worst totally inadequate, unattractive, unhealthy and, most cruelly, ashamed of themselves.
This, of course, was the object of the programme because what do most people do when they feel these feelings? They go on a diet and pay out money to the diet industry in an attempt to feel better about themselves by following the 'advice' on the programme.
Because of the 98 per cent failure rate of dieting, the next stage after that is a broken diet and a binge.
This is a story that repeats itself time and time again and every woman who has ever felt the kind of dissatisfaction and shame about her body that is pressed on to her by this programme will have experienced it over and over. I can promise each and everyone of you affected by this programme that this time will be no different.
You're being led by the nose into a trap that gets more and more difficult to escape from - and this time it's Claire Sweeney who has hold of the rope and she's pulling you as hard as she can. Maybe she's not aware what she's doing and just wants some company in the trap. Maybe she is very aware.
Who knows.
Who cares - I do.
I wondered how long it would be before you spoke out about this - I see it wasn't long, you did me proud!
I heard about this programme from my colleague (I don't have a telly, so I haven't seen it) and it made my blood boil pretty much immediately. From what it sounds like, they've passed this off as a medical experiment to prove that as soon as you let go of your strictly controlled diet, you balloon hugely. So, a medical experiment with no control subject then. Where was the example of someone who has never dieted, who eats what their body tells them to, when it tells them to, and remains slender?
The colleague who told me about this show has swallowed the dieting and body hatred myths hook line and sinker. She daily berates herself for being fatter than she "should" be. Before her holiday she searched the internet for "miracle" diet solutions like flax seed oil, and spoke about "having to feel ashamed" of her body in a bikini.
So I briefly explained the experiment's inconsistencies to her and that over time, cravings ease and the diet naturally balances. She nodded enthusiastically. Encouraged, I told her about the experiment where they allowed children access to any food they wanted, any time they liked. Halfway through, she groaned and interjected "I bet they just had crisps and sweets". I triumphantly told them that no, over time, their diet naturally gravitated towards what they needed. I thought she'd taken it in, but she immediately went back to what she knew and started saying that Claire Sweeney's mum also has to keep an extremely tight rein on what she eats, otherwise she gets fat as well.
I'm no advertisement for intuitive eating, although I never diet. I am a size 18, a comfort eater, and not happy with my body, both for health and aesthetic reasons. But I pride myself that I am at least partway to enlightenment, and when I come up against people doggedly sticking to their received knowledge like that, it drives me insane. How on earth have people become so deluded?