When I stopped dieting, I lost the friendships that were built on a shared struggle of self-criticism and the endless pursuit of thinness. For two decades, I shaped my life around shrinking my body, but when I finally broke free from diet culture, I realised how much it had controlled not just my health, but my relationships. Letting go of the need to ‘fit in’ with diet talk and body shame brought me closer to myself, even if it meant leaving certain friendships behind. Reclaiming my worth was worth it—and I’ll never look back."

Perimenopause brings with it a storm of unsettling emotions that truly catch us off guard and leave us wondering if we are going to be able to stop flying off the handle at every single person or inconvenient situation that comes our way.

The declining oestrogen, the increased anxiety and mix of pressure from work, family dynamic, teenage kids as well as the frustration with symptoms all adds to the boiling pot, and often it spills over without warning.

Nothing could have prepared me for losing my dad so suddenly in the space of 4 weeks. Until now I haven't really opened up about it, but the impact it had on my relationship with food was so significant, I think it's really important to have the conversation about the impact our life experiences can have on our relationship with food.

within seconds there were women shouting out various body parts that they detested.

it took them nano seconds to get there

Then I asked them to look to the person next to them and pick out a body part of the other person and shout out what they should shrink, change or cover up

When I was growing up I was led to believe that periods were difficult, gross things that I just had to endure. When I got my first period age 10/11 my mum almost crashed the car and I could see from her face that the news of this new arrival wasn’t a welcome one

Diet culture makes us believe that we can’t be trusted around food without external intervention in the form of food lists, points, syns and meal plans. How could we possibly navigate he complex art of feeding ourselves when we are hungry without external rules?? Surely we would just eat cake all day and never eat another vegetable for the rest our lives!

Why is our relationship with exercise and movement so linked with body image and food?

Once upon a time we just moved because it felt good or because we needed to for survival, now its been taken over by diet culture and we barely see the point in doing anything unless it will take us to our dream body size asap!

We don't need to live our lives feeling out of control around food, nor do we need to spend any more of our precious time hating our bodies. We can learn new ways to reconnect with our intuition to help us make choices on how we eat from an internal place not meal plan given to us from the latest fad diet craze.