I still remember vividly the first time I ever gave what I was eating more than a momentary amount of consideration.

It was aged 10, during my last year of primary school. Our teacher asked us to keep a food diary for one day. I dutifully wrote down everything I consumed, which was all home cooked and hearty fayre made from things such as lentils and beans, owing to - I now understand - a combination of my mum having a special interest in nutrition and us being incredibly short of money (my mum was very much the Jack Monroe of her time).

When we handed in our homework, my food diary - which contrasted sharply with the diet of Frosties, cheese triangles and Findus Crispy Pancakes and chips eaten by my classmates - was deemed to be “the best” and pinned on the “honour wall”.

That was the moment when I started consciously attaching food to morality and realised that by controlling what I ate I could gain external validation. Of course, I existed in a culture which had probably already created an unconscious narrative in my mind along similar lines and this incident merely served to reinforce it. 

Up until then, I was vaguely aware I was, in the words of one of the mothers of my school friends, “larger than most”. Looking back at pictures of myself from that time, however, it’s clear by any reasonable assessment that I was very far from fat. I towered over everyone else in my class, had long, muscular arms and legs and broad shoulders. Some of the more petite girls would sometimes tease me about my frame, but my Mum told me they were just jealous because they all wanted my position of goal attack in our hugely successful school netball team. I believed her. I didn’t hate my body - or love it. I didn’t really think about it.

Food for control

When I was nine my youngest brother was born, four months premature. A year later we suffered a devastating bereavement in my family. These two events conspired to shift the tectonic plates of my life and create a need for me to have something to grab onto - something that would make me feel as though I was in control. On that day, food became it.

I yo-yo dieted through the first two years of secondary school, briefly developed anorexia at 14, compulsively ate until sixth form and was bulimic by the time I went to university. As I write, I’m 10 years into my recovery. After extensive and expensive therapy, a lot of heartache, turmoil and soul searching, I’m essentially back where I started at the age of nine: unusually tall, quite muscly and broad, well covered but not particularly fat, prone to objectively healthy food choices, but generally quite hungry. It’s how my body was designed to be. I used to worry about having a slightly high BMI of 26, until a doctor told me it’s far heathier to be consistently slightly overweight than to keep losing and regaining the same two stone over and over. He also told me that BMI is a load of old arse.

The above primary school memory happened in 1991, in less enlightened times. However, I recount it because last week it was revealed that Weight Watchers are offering a free programme for weight-conscious teenagers in the US. The company claims this is a response to concerns about the increasing BMI and consequent decreasing health of young people. For obvious reasons, my first and only response to this was “NOOOOOOOOO”.

Society absolutely has deeply ingrained and complex issues with unhealthy food choices, lack of exercise and a culture which commodifies the body. The various education-based solutions to this could include more effort to ensure nutritionally balanced meals in school canteens, more free school meals, more time for physical activity in the school day and more resources and funding for physical education. I’d also welcome the mooted clamp down on the dreaded fried chicken shops, which seem to have replaced ice cream vans as the after-school snack-dispenser of choice.

Weight Watchers alternative

The solution to this is not, however, by any logical or morally sound assessment, dieting. Dieting adds another layer of complication and pressure onto a dynamic already fraught with it. It also plays into a narrative which erroneously tells us that health is defined by weight, as opposed to lifestyle.

That’s why I was so heartened to read that Beyond Chocolate, an organisation I’ve worked with in the past, has taken the decision to offer their online course free to any teenager tempted by Weight Watchers’ offer. In contrast to Weight Watchers, Beyond Chocolate asks us to consider whether or why we are either addicted to our controlling our food intake, from a purely psychological perspective. It isn’t about weight: they won’t tell you what to eat. The aim is to make food less, not more of a burden in your life.

Healthy people eat or don’t eat in response to physical, as opposed to emotional, cues. Healthy people instinctually strike a balance between nourishment and enjoyment of the food they eat. Healthy people don’t panic if nothing that’s on their “allowed foods” list isn’t available on a trip or at a social gathering. That’s because healthy people don’t have an “allowed foods” list, allergies permitting. Nothing is off limits and anything can be enjoyed in moderation.

Our relationships with what we eat and our bodies has been pumped full of toxicity by a consumerist capitalist culture intent on placing us on the hugely lucrative binge and purge treadmill. The obesity epidemic in young people is a symptom of this. Do not be seduced into thinking that dieting is the answer.

Natasha Devon MBE is the former government mental health champion. She is a writer and campaigner and visits an average of three schools per week all over the UK. She tweets @_natashadevon. Find out more about her work here and preorder Natasha’s book A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental: an A-Z here

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook