I quit Noom.

I broke up with diet culture.

2022 is the year I reclaim my body and heal my relationship with food.

I have tingles just writing these things. Good tingles. Excited tingles!

I joined Noom in February 2020. I weighed 209 pounds. I lost twenty pounds. Then I regained some. Lost some. Regained some. My weight crept up and up until I weighed in at 230 pounds in November 2021.

God I am so sick of dieting and diet culture and all the shame, shame, so much fucking shame.

I wrote plenty of blog posts about Noom and the things I was learning and how I was convinced that this was it. This was the “lifestyle change” that was going to help me reach my “goal weight” whatever the fuck that means. I will keep those posts – for now. (Though writing this, I find myself thinking it would be very cathartic to delete them!)

Noom asks “Noomers” to step on the scale every. single. morning. I have not stepped on a scale since before sometime before Christmas. I do not know how much I weigh right now.

Why do I feel like I have escape a cult?

In 2022, I am working to Reclaim My Life. From January through March, I am focusing on Reclaiming My House. Then, I will switch gears and focus on Reclaiming My Body for three months. But even though my focus is currently on decluttering, cleaning, and changing up our home, I am already reclaiming my body.

Step One: I started reading Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating, by Christy Harrison. The book is dredging up all sorts of feelings. I am feeling a lot of resistance along the lines of, But I want to be thin! If I stop dieting, won’t I be fat forever? Can’t I be thin? Why am I doomed to be fat? I am going to feel these feelings, explore my resistance, and listen to my inner voice.

I do not know where my inner voice will take me, but I do know this: for years, my inner voice has been pointing me toward intuitive eating. Maybe I will embrace intuitive eating for the rest of my life. Maybe my inner voice will lead me somewhere else next. But I know that magic happens when I listen to my inner voice, so I am diving into intuitive eating.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’m terrified but also elated.

And I feel this comforting cozy peace, like I have arrived somewhere that I am meant to be.

It’s a brave new world. I don’t know what it looks like, but I know it does not involve Noom.