Let me say, before we begin, that you are under no obligation to be healthy. What you do with your health, and your life, is entirely your business. In fact, a lot of the time, no matter what you end up doing with your life, your body will do what it wants to do anyway. Because it’s not totally under your control.

Health and life are a crapshoot. When it comes to nutrition, my official position is: variety is your friend. Minimize your nutritional risk by spreading it over a wide range of foods. Also? Nutrition is a very young science. Don’t mortgage your enjoyment of food today because there’s a chance you might live three extra days when you’re 90. Life is, literally, too short. And there is no such thing as a zero-risk situation.

Don’t go on a “diet” unless you have a specific health condition diagnosed by your doctor for which there is an official dietary intervention (like the DASH diet for hypertension, nutritional guidelines for diabetes and heart disease, specific micronutrient restriction for renal disease, etc.) If you are a normal, healthy individual, eat good quality food in the amount right for you. This can’t be determined by a chart, or whatever random calorie calculator you find online. But you can figure it out all on your own, without fancy lab equipment.

Pay attention to your hunger and satiety signals. Eat when you are hungry, and stop when you are satisfied. Don’t leave the table still hungry, or so full that you feel bad. Slow down, remove or turn off distractions, and give your mealtimes the attention they are due. Food is important. Food sustains life. Enjoy it, respect it — don’t treat it like a nuisance or a chore or a toy.

Also, just as people have varying appetites for food, everyone has a unique need for exercise. Don’t exercise to “burn calories” or as punishment for how you look/what you ate. Do it because it feels good, because it’s a hell of a fun time, because it gets you out in the fresh air with people you like. Don’t injure yourself or make yourself so sore that you won’t want to move tomorrow.

If you feel you must lose weight, keep this in mind: weight loss won’t necessarily solve any health problems. It might make some of them worse. Most people will gain back more weight than they lost. And people who focus primarily on weight loss can easily lose sight of good nutrition and enjoyable activity, instead slipping into punishing or unrealistic habits that can’t be sustained.

There is a well-documented phenomenon among dieters known as the “restraint/disinhibition” cycle. It is your body’s natural reaction to perceived starvation. No matter how much willpower you have, your body will eventually force you, through some very strange behaviours, to refeed yourself and regain weight. And if you don’t go through this refeeding, you might be in even bigger trouble: eating disorders have the highest death rate of any mental illness.

If you feel out of control with your eating or exercise, call a spade a spade and don’t blame yourself for being a fat lazy pig with no self-control: see a dietitian who deals with eating disorders. Binge eating disorder is not solely the province of fat people; neither is anorexia nervosa or over-exercising solely the province of thin people. If your eating or exercise behaviours are out of whack, you might need some help, regardless of your size. Preferably, find someone who practices Health At Every Size. These problems can be difficult to solve on your own. I know because I’ve been there.

A final statement about weight. What is your healthy weight? Don’t look at the BMI or some insurance company’s chart. I will tell you how to find your healthiest weight: eat well and live well, and watch what your weight does. It might go up or down for a while. When it finds its happy place, it will stay there.

Your healthiest weight is the weight you are at when you are healthy.

Standard disclaimer: you are reading a page on the Internet. While I mostly know what I am talking about, I don’t know you or your specific case. If you plan to make any changes that could impact your health, for gosh sakes, consult your health care team. Most importantly, be scientifically literate, think critically, and take all health advice — whether it’s from me or your doctor — with a grain of salt. Humans are sometimes wrong. You ultimately get to decide what to do with your body; that also means you have to deal with the results.