The thing about this occasion is that while it’s fair to say it puts often-unhealthy romantic pressures on everyone, from long term married couples to single folks to developing adolescents and everyone in between, it also carries a host of secondary pressures and toxic messages as well.

Here we are, the middle of January, where unrealistic and deficit-based New Year resolutions go to die, but not before they’ve made you feel like a quitter or failure. You don’t need that in your life!

Oh, do I have stories... There was the time my job banned “junk food” because leadership decided to impose a “food as medicine” approach on the entire staff, thereby promoting the misguided idea that some foods are bad and by extension, that people who enjoyed those foods were bad.

I was on a diet before I’d finished elementary school, so when I talk to clients about body image issues, difficult relationships with food, and the ubiquity of diet culture, I come to these topics with experience. In fact, my longest running relationship is my relationship to dieting