Maybe it was when I got the press release for “paleo baby food.” Or it’s from interviewing moms who counted calories and carbs throughout their pregnancies, trying to walk the line between growing their baby and not gaining “too much” weight. It’s from hearing parents of toddlers worry that their baby bellies are too big, or that they love carbs “too much.”

Or it was the moment when I body shamed myself in front of my toddler daughter… and she parroted my words back to me.

At some point, while writing The Eating Instinct, I realized that the fight against diet culture isn’t just something women are doing for ourselves. It is that, of course — it is about the liberation I feel buying the jeans that fit, not the ones with the arbitrary number I think I should be; it is about not apologizing for your hunger or your food preferences; it is about taking up the all the space you need in this world. But it’s also for them. So our daughters don’t grow up internalizing all of the girl-hating rhetoric we live with. So our sons don’t grow up thinking a woman’s body is the most important thing about her.

For me, every day is #nodietday. Diet culture lies. You don’t have to buy it.