Most diets fall under 1 of 2 categories—they either claim to unlock a previously misunderstood secret of nutrition science that may lead to effortless losing weight ; or they promise a cutting-edge option to change your thinking around food which will lead to effortless fat loss

The reality is that though there are certain habits most doctors and nutritionists would encourage once and for all health—eating more vegetables and fruit, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep—there is no one weight-loss system that actually works for everyone . Increasingly, the consensus is the fact that dieting, in the whole, does not work, and that body size is not necessarily a beneficial metric for health.

A lot of us spend our days enclosed by food we don’t actually need for survival, and spend our lives in bodies that look different than what has been held up as ideal. Portion control pits us against ourselves by making external rules—plate size, numbers on a label—the arbiter of your appetites instead of our actual hunger. It also denies that humans sometimes eat for reasons that have nothing to do with fueling our bodies, that pleasure is a legitimate thing to expect from food.

A healthier relationship with food, Thomas says, requires an individual to “understand exactly what the body is asking for and respond to that… Both in terms of your hunger and fullness levels, but additionally such things as pleasure and satisfaction.” There’s no easy way to measure that.