This nutritionist-approved app helps you develop a healthier relationship with food and your body

This nutritionist-approved app helps you develop a healthier relationship with food and your body

Whether you realize it or not, diet culture has likely influenced how you view food and your body. As a child, you may have seen your parents only eating candy after sports because they “earned it.” The magazines you read as a teenager may have told you that a growling stomach is just a sign that you should drink some water—not that you're actually hungry. And the food packaging you currently see on supermarket shelves emphasizes its “clean” ingredients and lack of “processing.”

"Diet culture is something you're born into—you can't choose it," says Abby Chan, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian and co-owner of EVOLVE Flagstaff in Arizona. “I think it’s really hard to go against the grain and go against everything you’ve ever been taught and told.”

Enter Way, a newly launched mindfulness app designed to help you find peace in your relationship with food and your body. To ensure she achieves this goal, the app was developed with the help of registered dietitians. intuitive nutritionists and non-dietary personal trainers. “We are an anti-restrictive diet – we are here to help you find your lifestyle,” says Bentley Adams, co-founder and CEO of Way.

The Way app, explained

You can think of Way as similar to an interactive journal that helps you break down your feelings about food and your body, how those feelings are currently serving you, and how you can change them for the better, says Clara Nosek, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian in Modesto, California and Way partner. “If Headspace and Buzzfeed quizzes had a baby, it would be this app,” she adds.

Currently, the app offers 67 “sessions,” or self-reflection activities, to help you explore why you eat, exercise, and think about your body a certain way. These sessions are divided into three “paths” – Emotional Eats, Body Feels and Mindful Shifts. In the Emotional Eats path, you'll reflect on, among other things, your eating rules (think: you have to eat everything on your plate, even when you're full) and the foods that excite you. The Body Feels path challenges you to think about how certain foods make you feel mentally and physically, and also dives into the differences between movement and exercise.

The Mindful Shifts path, on the other hand, focuses on topics such as self-talk, non-judgment of others, and gratitude. "It's really about reversing diet culture and the 'perfect' body image that constantly surrounds you, [which] becomes a barrier to having a good relationship with food and your body," says Adams. For example, in one session you will be asked to think about a part of your body that you like and then incorporate it into your daily routine (e.g. saying something positive). about yourself when you look in the mirror.) "By doing this one thing every day, it changes the way you align with the rest of your body and the rest of your thought patterns," he adds.

But change doesn't happen overnight. That's why the Way app only allows you to work through three sessions per day, says Chan, who is also a Way partner. "I think a lot of times when people want to change their relationship with food, they want to consume everything at once, and then it gets really washed out and you don't have time to process it and let it sink in," she explains. Once you've reached your daily limit, you may be more likely to spend some time reflecting on the sessions and how you can apply your learnings to your daily life, says Chan.

"The focus here is on the long game: How can we enable lasting change and meaningful shifts in the mindset of app users? [and] empower them to truly make decisions for themselves, as opposed to... the way society dictates," Nosek adds. However, Way is not intended to replace registered dietitians or other health professionals who can help you heal your relationship with food and your body, but rather to help you begin your journey, she explains. “I think it's a really great stepping stone for people who want to move away from this very nutrition-centered, very weight-normative approach to their health and their relationship with food,” says Nasek.

The influence of the Way app

By ditching the typical meal tracking and calorie counting features and instead encouraging introspection, Way is shaking up the healthy eating app category. “This is the only app that doesn’t give you a prescription that you need to eat X amount per day and move X amount per day to ‘earn’ your food,” says Chan. "[Way] actually asks you to question and reflect and make a mindful shift. I think that's going to be a big shift for a lot of people who are used to logging everything."

This break with the status quo is intentional. In fact, Adams hopes Way will “turn the restrictive diet industry on its head.” “It must be reversed – it is a threat to humanity and I will say that unequivocally.”

The reason: Diets are both psychologically and physically harmful, says Chan. Weight cycling (also known as yo-yo dieting) is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, as well as depressive symptoms, research shows. "If you're always being told that your body is 'wrong'—if you really have no control over what it looks like, what it's going to do, or how it's going to react to these diets—that can be really damaging. [You'll] always feel like you don't fit in, and always try to keep up with it," says Chan. "That's the beauty of Way - you watch as you start to accept this amazing body that you're given."

With its $6.99/month subscription price, Way also serves as an affordable, accessible tool to begin these perspective shifts. “Finding a nutritionist, a wellness coach, or an intuitive nutritionist can be costly,” says Nosek. “At its price, the app can make exploring the anti-diet space, exploring the origins of your diet rules, and introspectively exploring your relationship with your body and your diet more accessible to many more people.”

And for Adams, creating a low-stakes space for introspection — and unlearning diet culture — is the ultimate goal. “What I believe Way is doing and will continue to do is create a safe, non-judgmental environment for people to explore themselves,” Adams says. "...You'll never step on a scale in Way, you'll never count a calorie, you'll never track a macro or a micro. Nobody will judge you for anything you say. I think that's a big part of how we create a space that ultimately helps people develop a healthy relationship with not only food and their bodies, but also their mental health."