Though I remained on some type of diet (from old-school programs like Weight Watchers to silent, obsessive calorie counting, to diets disguised as wellness trends) well into my early 20s, all of this food talk remained solidly inside my head. I was embarrassed to say I was dieting at all. To say that was to invite responses of “You don’t need to lose weight,” which mortified me; in my mind, this response would always be a lie—an attempt at being polite. How embarrassing, I thought.

As for what my friends ate, I remained quietly jealous. Jealous of friends who never seemed to worry about their weight. Jealous of friends who could eat “whatever they wanted.” Jealous of friends who simply ate when they were hungry and enjoyed their meals. I built up a slow-churning resentment that remained just below the surface of things.

It wasn’t until I turned 25 and experienced a major personal loss that I really started to unpack the toll diet culture had taken on my life. I was confronted with the reality that life is brief, and that a future, thinner version of myself wasn’t guaranteed. I read books like The F*ck It Diet and learned about Health at Every Size. But most of all, I tried to figure out what dieting had ever brought me other than disordered eating habits, bitterness, and stress. So I stopped the calorie counting and the diets and the “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change” programs that I had clung to for years. Two years later it’s still a daily battle, but now, instead of fighting cravings and the long list of what I “shouldn’t” eat, I fight the urge to restrict. I fight the impulse to eliminate entire food groups and to binge on “bad” foods in private.

It has taken years of pushing against all of that to realize that the envy I felt toward my friends never really had to do with food at all. It had to do with the ease some people had around food that I had never experienced.

When I quit dieting, it made me a better, happier human. It also made me a better friend. I no longer go out to dinner and think about what I’m eating versus what my friends are eating and the moral value of either meal. I no longer obsess over my weight versus others’ weight or worry about what people will think if I get a salad or a burger. I no longer compare my willpower to resist carbs with someone else’s. In fact, I no longer fear carbs at all (it is amazing how much this single change alone can revolutionize your life). Quitting dieting taught me that it is hard to be fully present in any relationship if you are always in survival mode, always in competition with food and those around you.

I thought that dieting would give me control over whether or not I liked myself, of whether I was worthy of joy or love or success. But dieting never gave me any of that. It never left me with anything at all, other than that little corner of my brain, the catalog of good and bad food, of right and wrong meals. It was that corner of my brain that prevented me from being fully present with my friends. I spent so much time in my head, trying to figure out which foods were good or bad, that I missed out on everything else. Now I know that food, weight, and thinness don’t have moral value. And all that jealousy I used to have for friends who ate whatever they wanted? Turns out all it took for it to disappear was to finally believe that I could too.

Olivia Muenter is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and digital content creator.

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