Such a valuable video for anyone who’s ever beat themselves up because their diet didn’t work long term:

There was once a time when what and how much I ate shadowed every waking moment of my day. Fortunately, that time ended years ago; I’m much the same weight now (I’ve never been overweight), but my relationship with food has metamorphosed from one of confusion, fear and toxicity to one of joy and adventure.

Time spent dieting, or thinking about dieting, or wishing you could diet successfully, or yearning to lose weight is time wasted. Time spent cooking real, delicious food; thinking about real, delicious food; or looking forward to being hungry so you can eat real, delicious food is time excellently spent.

I lost a bit of weight when I stopped worrying about what I ate and started enjoying eating (more when I cut back my student-level drinking), but I gained a whole new world of mental relief, curiosity and pleasure. Imagine a society-wide food landscape that values food rather than fearing or fetishising it and that stops persuading people to buy food based on which advert shouts the loudest. When we leave it to a gaggle of international profit-run companies to tell young people what food is, where it comes from and how to cook it, is it any wonder that so many turn to dieting as the only accessible way to take control of the whole messy business?