Book excerpt: A clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist busts common myths around food, nutrition, and weight loss to set you on a path towards healing and self-love. A 10-step approach to ditching diet culture, healing your relationship with food, and cultivating compassion for your body. Diets don’t work—and it’s not your fault. As a culture, we’re told (and tell ourselves) that if we just lose the weight—try a little harder, have a little more willpower, or deprive ourselves for a little bit longer—we’ll be happier, healthier, and more confident. But it’s not true. Clinical psychologist Alexis Conason debunks the myths we’ve been sold about food, nutrition, health, and weight loss, and offers an antidote to the pain and harmful health consequences that result from yo-yo diets, untenable food regimens, and quick fixes. Conason, who is also an eating disorder specialist, shows readers how radically shifting our relationship to food and our own bodies can be incredibly healing, nourishing, and can help us to better love and care for ourselves. Enriched with case studies, practical meditations, stories, lessons, and activities, her 10-step program will help you: • Challenge your assumptions about weight and health • Understand the ways that our emotions can impact how and why we eat • Embrace your “yum” and tune into taste with mindful eating • Trust your body to be your guide and find real fullness Reframing dieting and diet “failure” as pervasive aspects of our culture—not individual failures—The Diet-Free Revolution offers a roadmap to healing, self-acceptance, and radical new ways of relating to and loving our bodies.