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The Path Beyond Binge Eating
Binge eating has a way of making you feel like the problem — like if you just had more discipline, more willpower, more resolve, you'd finally get this under control. But binge eating isn't a willpower problem, and you were never the problem to begin with.
The Path Beyond Binge Eating is for women 30 and older who are ready to identify, interrupt, and replace binge eating, restriction, chronic dieting, and emotional eating — and start creating a relationship with food and body something that actually lasts.
Each week, Licensed Therapist, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, and Binge Eating Recovery Coach Molly Dyer will invite you on a path through the practical steps of moving beyond binge eating and toward a consistent, sustainable relationship with food, your body, and yourself.
Informed by 12 years of clinical experience and a Polyvagal lens, this show is not therapy — it is informational and educational, for women who are done waiting to lose weight or change their body to start living. This is where binge eating stops running the show and you start finding your way back to yourself.
New episodes every Wednesday. Follow the show and learn more about Molly, and how you can find support at www.MollyDyer.com
The Path Beyond Binge Eating
3. Why Women Bond Over Diet's | A Path Beyond Binge Eating episode on diet culture, comparison, and connection."
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Why do so many women feel closest to each other over a shared diet — and so alone the moment they step off the plan? In this episode, Molly unpacks the biological drive women have to bond with one another, how diet culture quietly hijacks that drive into comparison and competition, and — crucially — how the disconnection that follows can become a direct trigger into the restrict-binge cycle. If you've ever felt torn between wanting to heal your relationship with food and wanting to belong, this episode names that tension and offers a different way forward. To learn more about diets and the binge cycle, or you want to learn more about how you can work with Molly,
visit MollyDyer.com
Hello and welcome to the Path Beyond Binge Eating, the show for women who want to stop being pulled back into binge eating patterns. I'm your host, Molly Dyer. Today we are talking about an experience I know personally and that is shared by many of the women I work with and within the communities that surround them. Women bonding over diets, bonding over weight loss goals, bonding over the gym classes they're taking, bonding over the new plan they're all starting on Monday. It's so normalized that we barely question it. But what if it isn't as straightforward as dieting together or a shared goal of attending a specific workout class at 5 a.m. every day with three or four other women? It's my perspective that it's about so much more than that. I believe what women really want is belonging, a feeling that we're all in this together, which makes sense. Women often bond over dieting because we have an innate biological drive to connect with other women. Throughout our history, women survived together, raising children, creating safety, sharing responsibilities. Connection wasn't optional, it was essential to survival. That wiring is still alive inside of us today. But diet culture has hijacked some of the focus of our primal drive to connect with each other. Instead of bonding through shared wisdom, support, kindness, and genuine closeness that survival necessitates, I often hear about women bonding through diets, exercise plans, comparison, self-criticism, and chasing body ideals. When I take a look at this from my own perspective, I see that their attempt at bonding isn't really about the diet. It's about a longing for our genetically programmed need for community of other women. Let's talk about how this plays out. A group of women starts the same diet. There's excitement, group chats, motivation, and accountability. It really feels like closeness. But as soon as someone loses weights faster or sticks to the plan more perfectly, or gets results the others aren't seeing in themselves, comparison enters the room. And comparison tears the connection apart. It whispers, she's succeeding. I'm not. I don't belong here. The very thing that looked like bonding ends up creating a disconnection. Now, imagine what happens when one woman in the group sprains her ankle, and another woman has to stop because her body had an adverse reaction to the diet. And yet there's another woman who notices her body isn't changing the way she perceives other women's are. Or someone gets exhausted from all the trying and slows her pace down. Almost instantly, women feel a sense of failure, like they're falling behind, doing it wrong. They feel the deep ache of seeing the woman in the group moving forward without them. And this changes from I belong to something like I can't keep up, I don't deserve to belong, or I am missing out because I can't work harder. If only I had more willpower. This is truly painful. And I hear their own version of this scenario from clients again and again. I also notice it so much happening within my own community. This dynamic doesn't just show up in friendships. It often shows up in families too. Plenty of families bond through dieting, sharing meal plans, talking about weight, comparing progress, celebrating successes together. But even in families, people with shared history and genetics, comparison can lead to division. Women often tell me about comments made between sisters, cousins, mothers, daughters that quietly embed shame, competition, and hierarchy. If comparison can erode the connection among family members, of course, just like families, it affects relationships with women in the community, at work, or in our social circles. And the women who choose to stop dieting and practice what helps them heal their relationship with food in their body, they describe a deep feeling of isolation from the women around them. It's because they don't want to diet anymore. They don't want to track, restrict, or compete. They want peace. But the other women in the circles are still bonding over diets, still doing challenges, still tracking macros, calories, and feeling like they're not keeping up. The women that have chosen healing are left to think, I don't want a diet, and I want to belong. I don't want to compare myself, and I want a community. The tension is real. So here's a question. What if your connection with other women wasn't built on weight loss, size goals, discipline, perfection, diet rules? What if friendships were rooted in shared values, laughter, creativity, conversations that matter to you, emotional closeness, authentic support? What if connection didn't require comparison? Women are resilient. Women are powerful. Women deserve relationships that are nourishing, not depleting. I want to clarify something here. I'm not saying that all female friendships include dieting and deprivation comparison. I'm just saying that what I notice in my own life looking around and with my clients is that they talk about this common theme so often that I wanted to bring it so we could discuss it together here. I wonder have you ever felt pressure to fit in with women through dieting or weight talk? And if so, did it feel like connection at first, only to become comparison later? Have you ever felt isolated because you were not dieting when everyone else was? You are invited to share your thoughts in the comments. This is a real issue, and you're absolutely not alone. Thanks for listening. Be sure to follow the Path Beyond Binge Eating on your favorite podcast player so you won't miss any future episodes. If today's conversation resonated with you, I would love to hear about it. I'm Molly Dyer, and I will see you next week on the Path Beyond Binge Eating.