Is breathing all in your head? C’mon. Don’t let diet culture gaslight your body’s most basic needs. And don’t do it to yourself.

Can you imagine if we treated other primal functions the way we treat hunger? “I’m out of breath again????? I JUST breathed.” Like breathing and blinking and sneezing and peeing, your body’s got needs, and you just have to roll with it.

But somehow, diet culture has managed to spin your body’s need for food into, ahem, alternative facts: Hunger is really just thirst. Hunger is really just boredom. Hunger is really just weakness. For real?

Hunger is just hunger! It’s a signal that says “hello, hi, there’s a lot going on in here, and you don’t even know the half of it. It’s time to refuel.” It’s a demand, not a democracy, and it’s NO BIG DEAL. It has zero point zero zero to do with your worth as a person.

Craving food doesn’t make you crazy. It just makes you human. And one of the most critical steps in recovery is to start accepting this truth and stop giving the time of day to logic-bending alternative facts. Forgive yourself for needing food and having a body and taking up space. Then move the f#$k on.