There are a lot of misconceptions about Health at Every Size®, even among people who know that dieting is futile. I want to talk about them here and why they are just plain wrong.

Misconception #1: HAES® is just an excuse to overeat all the time.
Why it’s wrong: You might have missed it, but “health” happens to be the first word in Health at Every Size®. Is constantly overeating healthy? I think most of us can agree it is not. The opposite of restrictive eating is not overeating, it is freedom to eat, which is a very different thing than overeating. In fact, many studies on restrictive eating show a strong association with overeating, which means that you are more likely to frequently binge-eat while on a diet than you are not on a diet at all. HAES® emphasizes getting in tune with internal signals of hunger and fullness…