'You can't hate your body into being thinner'

My interview with athlete and intuitive eating coach Pam Moore who found joy when she stopped counting macros and gave herself permission to eat.

Hey friends, I’m back with my series Dared to Ditch, where I interview people who have dared to break free from diets and restrictive eating. Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with intuitive eating coach and journalist

Pam Moore

, who writes at

Real Nourished: Reinventing Your Relationship with Food

. Pam is also an accomplished athlete, a two-time Ironman finisher, a six-time marathoner, and a certified personal trainer, who leads group coaching programs for active women who are ready to stop micromanaging their food and exercise.

Credit: Briana Noonan

As a midlife women who has been passionate about fitness my whole life, I was thrilled to interview Pam, because she embodies a powerful message for active women: You can be a dedicated, high-achieving athlete and not drive yourself crazy over food and exercise.

In this interview, Pam opens up about hitting “rock bottom” during the peak of her macro-counting days. She also shares her early days of intuitive eating and what it was like to give herself permission, one by one, to eat the foods she had forbidden for years. I can't wait for you to hear her insights—be sure to let me know what you think in comments!

“You cannot hate your body into submission. You can't hate your body into being thinner or being better. You can't hate yourself into being happier.”

—Pam Moore

Bio: Pam Moore is a freelance writer, standup comic, and intuitive eating coach with bylines in outlets including The Washington Post, Runner's World, SELF, and many others. A  6x marathoner and 2x Ironman finisher, she's an avid gravel cyclist and weight lifting enthusiast. She lives in Boulder, CO with her family. Visit her at pam-moore.com.

Without further ado, here is the interview! It’s been edited for length and clarity. To read more first-person accounts of other women who have quit diets, check out Dared to Ditch. And if you’ve quit diets, I would love to share your story, too. Please reach out in comments or DM me!

Pam Moore’s interview for Dared to Ditch

Kristi: I just came straight from listening to your Hit Play Not Pause podcast interview. You talk about counting macros being the final straw for you and (led to your) understanding of “I'm out of control, this is not okay.” That was the rock bottom moment?

Pam: Yeah, actually there were a lot of vivid moments leading up to the terrible moment, but I was in my kitchen, my kids were playing on the floor in the next room, and the app I was using had different phases. So you start in phase one, and essentially I think it's similar ratios of the different macros as you go down in phases, but the calories are a little bit less, so they're like, “Once you start plateauing in phase one, move to phase two. Once you start plateauing in phase two, move to phase three.”

By plateau, that means you stop losing inches. They don't want you to weigh yourself, but you're taking progress photos for the app every week, so you can track your visual progress, different angles of your body and measurements.

I think I was in phase two, maybe phase three, I can't remember, but it's less calories with every phase, and I was starving. And the whole idea is like, “It's macro counting, it's not dieting, so you're not supposed to be hungry, right?” which is garbage as far as I'm concerned.

And I was stressing out, because I was just like, oh my God, I've been hungry for days. I'm adhering to my macros, I'm eating all the calories I'm allowed to eat, I'm eating the right macros, I can't deal with this, like my stomach is eating itself.

It's like five o'clock, and I don't... have that many food macros left to eat. And the app or whatever it was, it had like a chat bot. And so I'm in the chat, like I'm in phase whatever, I'm starving, what should I do? And I'm waiting for a response, and I'm waiting and I'm waiting.

And I'm in my head, thinking I should be making dinner right now. Why am I standing here from my laptop waiting for a chat bot? Is it even a human? I don't even know what it is. I'm just standing here waiting for a robot to tell me what to eat.

And it just all at once sort of hit me, because it was about to be my 40th birthday.

So I was basically like, okay, I'm a 40-year-old woman waiting for my computer to tell me what to eat. This is bananas. I know what to eat. It was almost like a eureka moment, like you could have seen a light bulb on top of my head.

I'd never thought of it that way before. I'd had these inklings of, wouldn't it be better to accept myself the way I am rather than focus on losing these quote unquote last five pounds.

I had that thought for years and always came back to no, it would be better to lose the five pounds. Then I will be happy.

And then I was finally like, wait a minute.

I had lost the five pounds, but I wasn't happy. I was miserable. And I was like, this is crazy. And I was lying to my kids. They were old enough to see me. I never let my husband cook because I wouldn't know what was in the food. I wouldn't know the macros.

If I was making something from scratch, I was measuring out all the ingredients and then doing crazy math to be like, well, if I made this 9 by 12 dish of this and had this in the whole thing and I'm eating one twelfth of it … I was like a freaking mathematician.

And my kids were like, “Why are you weighing your food? Are you measuring your food? Why are you taking it separately?” And I was lying to them. I was like, “Oh, it's because mommy wants to be healthy.”

And yeah, just all at once, I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I think at the time, I was like, I'm just gonna stop for a week and see what happens. I'm not gonna count anything, not gonna track anything. And then after a week, I was just like, no, I'm never going back to that.

Kristi: So that was how long ago?

Pam: About six years ago.

Kristi: Then how long did it take you to decide you wanted to go into coaching for intuitive eating?

Pam: It was three years after I started my own intuitive eating process, then I embarked on getting certified.

But before that, before I was a writer, I was an occupational therapist, so I'd been helping people in a clinical setting until my second child was born in 2014. And I had worked in mental health—OTs’ roots are actually in mental health—so I had a lot of background in psychology and behavior and human motivation.

And then I guess once I felt pretty comfortable as an intuitive eater, I was like, Oh my God, this has changed my life so much. I want to show other people how to do this. 

I had thought previously that intuitive eating or any type of changes in the way you relate to food were really just for people who had clinical eating disorders, which I had never identified as having. I didn’t think I met the diagnostic criteria. I just was a disordered eater, and so it was like a problem that I thought was not a problem because I think most or many people in our culture are disordered eaters.

They’re either on the wagon or off the wagon, or like where I live and I'm sure where you live too in Austin, like in Boulder you know people are on keto.

“I'm paleo. I'm low carb”—it's like a religion or an identity—“I don't do sugar. I intermittent fast.” All these things are culturally sanctioned as healthy. I think it's unpopular today in 2024 to say you're trying to lose weight.

You still want to, but you want to say that you're getting healthy. 

Kristi: Yeah, the people who I would say are lifelong dieters and restrictors, I think they would legitimately argue they're not dieting, but everything they do is an attempt to either lose weight or control their body size.

Pam: Absolutely. It’s just a different name. The whole time I was engaging in disorder habits, which is like from high school until about age 40, I never told anyone, “Now I'm on a diet.” That would have been embarrassing. That would have been weird. Yeah, my mother might be on a diet, like my mother might go to Weight Watchers. 

But did I follow the zone diet? Yes, I did, but it was a lifestyle.

Did I have to do the South Beach diet? Yes, but it was a lifestyle. 

And I remember one of my friends asking me about the macros, she was like, “What's your goal?”

I was like, “Oh just to get lean and stuff” and she was like, “When are you going to be done? How long is it going to go for?“

And I was like, “forever, it’s a lifestyle.”

I would not have identified with the word diet or even restricting. But I felt like when I became an intuitive eater, I had been wearing a heavy backpack and I didn't know it. Now it's off, I feel good, and I want other people to experience this too.

Like I never put it together. Like until I did, I wasn't willing to say, or didn't understand the reason I was thinking about food all the time or felt obsessed with ice cream, or whatever it was, was because I was depriving myself.

I wasn't getting it, and then when I did, it was like, oh, it all makes sense.

Kristi: Did you hire an intuitive eating coach yourself or did you feel like you had enough with the book (“Intuitive Eating” by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch)?

Pam: When I first went to Austin on that vacation that I mentioned in Selene’s podcast, I brought with me this book I think it's called “The Psychology of Eating” by Marc David. I don't even remember where I got it or what I was thinking when I bought it. I think I bought it before the trip.

So I happened to be reading that on the trip, and his approach isn't the same as intuitive eating, but it's very aligned. It asks provoking questions like why do we eat? What's motivating the eating? So I started with that, and then I bought the “Intuitive Eating” book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. And then what else did I read? Then I read “The F*ck It Diet” by Caroline Dooner.

So no, I never hired anybody. I just started, like in a structured way, sort of experimenting with some of the principles of intuitive eating, that I learned from the book. Like I remember very clearly the concept of giving yourself full permission. I just started experimenting. About once a week, I would go somewhere and order something that I would not normally order or that I would have ordered but only if other conditions were in place like I can eat this if I ran X amount of miles today, but I would just eat them and really taste them and really feel how I felt in my body during and after the eating, and that was new for me.

I remember all those experiences like it was my first time eating the food. I went for coffee with a friend, and I got this chocolate-dipped macaroon, and it was so amazing, and I was just like I wouldn't have let myself have this normally. It tasted so good, and oh my gosh, I don't feel like I need to eat four of them. I had one and I'm satisfied because I know I can eat it again tomorrow. This is amazing. 

And I remember the first time I stopped eating dinner with some food left on my plate. I always just ate without thinking—that's actually something I probably still need to work on—like really checking in with my fullness cues. But I have always had a habit of just eating till there's nothing left on the plate.

I remember being like, you know what? I don't need these last few bites. That felt remarkable. So I just went through the principles of the book. I don't think I did them in order. I just did whatever felt right at the time.

And then I just started noticing diet culture everywhere where I hadn't noticed it before. 

“My approach to exercising in a healthy way was being really honest with myself about my workouts and the energy behind them. Like, is this from a place of love? Like I love to do this, and even if I'm not in the mood to do it right this minute, I'm going to do it because I know I'm going to feel better after?”

—Pam Moore

Kristi: Because of your background as an athlete, did you struggle with the (intuitive eating principle) of movement?

Pam: My interpretation of gentle movement is do movement that feels nourishing. I think number one, depending on how disordered you are or what level of obsession you're at, it might be healthy to fully take a break from working out, which I do at different times in the season. Like sometimes I do just cause I'm traveling and I don't have access to a bike and I don't really run anymore and I'm just totally out of my routine. And I'm okay with that.

Or like right now. I biked so much this summer, and it was amazing. I feel like I'm as fit as I've ever been … and I'm getting a little bit sick of my bike. So I'm going to just take two full weeks off the bike.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to move. I'm just going to take two weeks off my bike, so that I can come back in November or late October and be really enthusiastic.

So that's like an intentional break. But that's honestly, almost more performance-oriented. I feel like, you know, elite athletes taken an off season. And it is part of my long-term plan. I want to feel good again next summer, and I know that I need to slow down. And this is a good season to do that.

I do think (the authors of “Intuitive Eating” are) not speaking to an audience that's training for performance, or for community or for friendship, which those are all reasons that I work out. I think she's talking to the person who gets on the treadmill and is looking at the calories burned, and they can get off the treadmill when they burn X amount of calories.

And even though weight loss was part of my motivation or weight maintenance was part of my motivation, it wasn't the whole thing. So my approach to exercising in a healthy way was being really honest with myself about my workouts and the energy behind them. Like is this from a place of love? Like I love to do this, and even if I'm not in the mood to do it right this minute, I'm going to do it because I know I'm going to feel better after?

Or am I doing this because I'm afraid that if I don't I’ll gain weight or I'm afraid that if I don't I'll be too anxious to enjoy whatever foods at the party I'm about to go to?

Or is it because I’m anxious that I'm going to lose fitness and not be able to keep up with my friends?

So really is this fear-driven or is this love-joy driven? And I think of performance as (being) on that love-joy thing, because I'm not a professional athlete, if it's not causing joy there's no point of it for me.

Kristi: Do you have any advice or encouragement to share for people who haven't yet broken free of diets or healthy lifestyles or trying to control food?

Pam: The biggest advice that I think could be applicable to the most amount of people would be to extend yourself compassion.

And I say this knowing that for me, if somebody had said that to me before I really understood the power of self-compassion, I would have been like, “OK, what, and then get soft and then just be this loser who never gets anything done because I'm like patting myself on the back for every little thing.”

But that's not what it is. 

You cannot hate your body into submission. You can't hate your body into being thinner or being better. You can't hate yourself into being happier.

I think shame, it can motivate you, but I don't think it's a sustainable motivator. 

Whew! Pam packed a lot of insight about our complicated relationships with food and exercise into one conversation. I’d love to hear what you think—did you relate? Any big takeaways? Drop them into the comments! And if you loved this piece, consider sharing it with others. Share the link on your favorite socials or hit the restack button! 🔄

Share Your Story of Ditching Diets

If you’ve found freedom from dieting (or you know someone else who has), I’d love to share your story so that it may inspire someone else! DM or email me at kristik @ substack.com.