Stop Dieting, Start Listening

By now the New Year’s diet has well and truly worn off. But from her Ditchling Common home Sarah Moore is offering a psychological alternative.

- Duncan Hall

Sarah Moore recently found an old picture of herself in a bikini, taken when she was 15 and on holiday in France. It brought back a lot of memories – not least the beginning of her long battle with food. “I thought I was really big at the time,” she says from her home in Ditchling Common. “But I look at the photo now and I was probably the same as I am now. What followed was years of dieting, and falling off dieting, overeating and not listening to my own body.”

She admits attending an all-girls boarding school probably didn’t help: “It was rife with eating disorders. I had friends who had anorexia and bulimia. But disordered eating can stick in your diet mentality – you’re trying to improve and end up putting yourself down.”

Now from her Ditchling conservatory she has launched Kale and Cake, which offers one-on-one nutrition and eating psychology coaching. “I don’t think there is anything else out there which helps people who don’t have eating disorders, but do get caught up in the hype of turning vegan, clean eating, cutting out sugar or juice fasting,” she says. “If you feel like you’re carrying a bit of extra weight you fall into this diet trap. You’re eating food that somebody else is dictating to you and not listening to your own hunger and fullness.”