You are not an intuitive eating failure.
Guardrails can be the gentle off ramp from diets and weight loss when intuitive eating doesn't work
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Hey there Voice Finder,
I wrote Find Your Food Voice for you if you ever said:
Intuitive eating didn’t work for me.
And I get it. I can remember sitting in my car, parked in the driveway, for an hour after work just staring blankly out the windshield. I felt unsure about intuitive eating and I didn’t like the feeling. Honestly, it felt wrong to question it back then (circa 2010). I had been using intuitive eating as a tool to help people stop dieting as well as the path for folks while recovering from eating disorders but wondered if it was for everyone.
I remember feeling the tension in intuitive eating sessions where there were:
complicated health concerns
neurodivergent variances
cultural differences
lack of access
pervasive weight stigma
I picked Bittersweet Symphony to start Chapter 5’s Voice Finder playlist because of how it describes the stuck feeling in a materialistic world and inability to change paths. It reminds me of 2010 Julie sitting in her driveway wondering if she is royally f*cking up or rather seeing another way.
I could hear and feel how clients wanted a more peaceful relationship with food yet felt the burden pushed on them from diet culture.
Intuitive eating paved the way for many yet not everyone. If you felt like an intuitive eating failure, you too deserve a path away from the diet industry trap.
I have come to appreciate intuitive eating as just a tool—one of many—to help you move away from dieting. I have been looking forward to you reading Chapter 5 of Find Your Food Voice because it teaches the concrete tools I have to help you make non-diet living work for you.
Even if you:
live with complicated health concerns
identify as neurodivergent
have differences from dominant culture
experience lack of access to food or safe places to move your body
experience pervasive weight stigma.
And it begins with guardrails.
Guardrails can be the gentle off ramp from diets and weight loss
Guardrails are like yoga props. Have you taken a yoga class and used blocks and/or straps to access the poses? When I use these accessibility tools, it doesn’t mean I am not doing yoga and I appreciate I may always need them with how my body is built. The guardrails I teach in Chapter 5 may be temporary tools to help you not diet or become a long term or even permanent way for you to not diet.
My clients’ favorite guardrail by a landslide have been CHIPS (starting on page 95):
Check in props or CHIPS:
A time-based tool to help you practice noticing the present state of your mind, body, and soul. Scheduled about every two to three hours, CHIPs give you a speed bump during your busy day or downtime to consider your unmet needs. They help you connect with enough food and other means to sustain yourself as a human being. They are never meant to keep you from eating for any reason.
🗣 Discussion time: What do you notice when you practice CHIP pausing and barometer checks? How is your mind-body connection? What, if anything, surprised you?
Many clients who felt intuitive eating didn’t work needed concrete hands on tools to learn what they wanted. They also needed clarity about what they actually needed rather than what folks told them they should need. Here’s the catch: I couldn’t give the clarity or tell them what they wanted. I can’t for you either.
CHIPs quiet the diet industry noise so you can name how to live on your own terms. I loved listening to past clients post-CHIP meetings describe their new connection to their innate wants and needs. It was even better watching them start to trust them.
Instead of sitting in my driveway in fear, those post-CHIP client discussions made me appreciate there are many different paths to move away from diets and eating disorders. None are wrong even if they look different from intuitive eating. The goal is for you to eat without shame rather than be a perfect intuitive eater.
I believe you have your own unique way to live without dieting and I wrote Chapter 5 to remove the boulders from your path. I hope CHIPs help you clear the way to help you decide how you want to move away from dieting.
Even with your new found clarity from CHIPs, next steps will be tough. These specific lines in Defying Gravity I hold while you are navigating this spot:
I don’t want it…No, I can’t want it anymore…
Everyone deserves a chance to FLY.
As you go through Chapter 5, you will read my questions asking you how you experience food, movement, rest, connection, and emotions. I want you to build your vocabulary so you know how to stay grounded when the world predictably throws fire (hello 2025).
Discussion time: On page 99, I start writing about different types of hunger. How do you know when you are physically hungry? Emotionally hungry? Do you use your body’s messages or the clock to help you pinpoint this information?
Thank you for thinking through these tough questions. You are doing great work!
Build your Voice Finder vocabulary—how you know what you want or need—even to check out. As you practice your way, I hope you can listen to this song:
Music helped me write Find Your Food Voice and I let the Spotify DJ often choose. Sammy Rae and Friends came on my radar while writing chapter 5 and it just fits.
It’s happy, light—and god we need that right now.
It’s whatever we feel, it’s whatever we want to do.
It’s just the thing I want to do, it’s the thing I want to do, I’m doing it.
Bonus that the lead vocalist sings: you can address me by all three of my names. Since I was getting divorced while writing I definitely wanted everyone to keep saying Julie Duffy Dillon. Ironically, the Pivot chapter helped me make life changes and I am grateful for it.
That’s all for now!
Schedule change alert: I won’t be doing a live on Monday June 16th yet will be back on Monday June 23rd for our next UnDiet mini-session. Let me know in comments a topic or question you’d like to hear more about. Next week (Friday June 20) I will drop Chapter 6’s discussion questions.
Warmly,
Julie
p.s. Don’t forget the Find Your Food Voice book bonuses—it’s a free workbook to help you keep track of your gathered insight. Get to it here.
p.p.s. Someone recently asked if I join bookclubs that are reading my book. HELL YES! If your bookclub chooses Find Your Food Voice I will gladly meet up with you in person in central NC or via Zoom free of charge. Just email me julie@juliedillonrd.com. I would be honored to be a part of the discussion.
