You've probably lost weight before. The hard part is keeping it off.

Diet culture has trained us to chase quick fixes, believe restriction is strength, and feel that rules are safer than trusting ourselves with food.

It leaves us dependent on plans, suppression, and external control, convinced that without them, we'll spiral. And ultra-processed foods keep pulling us back into the binge-restrict cycle, making balance feel impossible.

The truth is, losing weight doesn't silence food noise. Unless you learn to work with your all-or-nothing thinking and unpick the damage diets have done, the same struggles will resurface - whether you're dieting, medicated or winging it.

In How Diets Make Us Fat, Shahroo Izadi shows how diets created the very problem they promised to solve, rewiring millions of us to eat in extremes while selling us back our own power at a price. Drawing on interventions used in addiction recovery for the most resistant clients, and her own experience of losing eight stone and keeping it off, she lays out a clear, compassionate framework for developing a dieting-damage-informed way of eating - one that finally allows you to manage your weight without fear or dependence.

Because losing weight is only part of the story. Learning to live free from diet culture's grip is the real victory.