The January diet monsters are out in full force. This year, the hot trend is clearly the customizable diet. MADE JUST FOR YOU!

In this magical MODERN version of a diet, for MODERN people, you can dare to…eat something that you enjoy! Leave your home! Live a life!

(For a fee, of course. Freedom is not free, folks.)

These diet companies want you to know that they see you, and you can finally just relax and be your true self.***

***As long as you follow all of the rules, all of the time. Otherwise your true self is a big, lousy failure.

At the end of the day, let’s be honest with ourselves: a customizable diet is just another regular old diet. Adding a thin veneer of “choice” does not change the fundamental truth that pursuing weight loss is pursuing weight loss, no matter what the details.

We’ve been brainwashed over the course of decades that losing weight is the ultimate marker of health, but it’s a deeply unnatural process that your body haaates. You know that feeling that your body is against you when you’re on a diet? THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS. And instead of treating this as a wakeup call (“Wow, if my body hates this diet thing so much, maybe it’s not serving me”), it turns into a war.

Being at war with your body, the only body you will ever get, isn’t just depressing. It’s counterproductive. For every attempt at well-intentioned weight loss, you’ll end up fighting off weight gain instead. Raise your hand if you’ve ever gained more weight back than you ever lost on a diet. (My hand shoots up into the air, smashing straight through the ceiling.)

This year, instead of spending your money on another diet and googling “101 ways to trick your body into not eating,” I challenge you to consider the dark side: a life without diets.

Intuitive eating is the only truly “customizable” approach to food, because there is no right and there is no wrong. Food is neutral, and your body is too. It just is what it is.

Transforming my body to look like someone else’s was a dream of mine for 20 years, and it wasn’t easy to say goodbye. But one day I accepted that it was all a fairy tale, and beyond my disappointment lay a whole new world of possibilities. I would have paid anything for a diet that promised me a life filled with freedom, pleasure, and peace. But those things were already inside of me, just waiting for me to reclaim them.