Listen to this chapter

Weight gain isn't the problem and weight loss isn't the solution.

I've defined eating well as a continuous way of being, rather than a one-time accomplishment. It's an ongoing project like learning an instrument, a language or pursuing a good life. These projects don't end until life itself ends.

Losing weight makes us lighter; eating well makes us better. We want to become someone who eats well, not someone who can lose weight. If we should weigh around 140 lbs, we need to become someone who eats in a way that keeps ourselves around 140 lbs. A weight loss diet is not the optimal tool for this task. Weight loss diets concern weight loss, not the betterment of eating behaviors. We all know someone who lost weight and acquired maladaptive eating behaviors along the way. Eating well nourishes our entire life, not only our body.

The results of a weight loss diet disappear when our previous eating behaviors reappear. Our body isn't the result of a diet, we are. We can lose weight but if we haven't improved our way of eating, we gain very little. What's required is a change of character, not merely a change of food. The task is to learn to eat like the person we need to become.

More often this task degrades into an attempt to keep a way of eating that we'd never wish to permanently sustain. If we lose weight by eating cabbage soup for 30 days, then that will be our result. We become a person who loses weight by eating cabbage soup. We haven't become a person who prioritizes our wellbeing in all we do. We haven't practiced eating well.

The etymology of diet.
Source: Wiktionary

Most people take weight loss as the end goal when it's a means to the end goal of living well. Eating well is also a means to an end goal, but it's much closer to the end goal. Eating well is an integral part of living well.

I appreciate your feedback on this chapter or the project as a whole!