Eating
The World Is Hungry for Direction.
The numbers are staggering: 65.8% of Australian adults are “overweight or obese” (AIHW, 2024). Diet and obesity dominate health policy, yet the solutions are profoundly reductive. The global response? Calorie counting, restrictive meal plans, medical metrics, and a global $290+ billion diet industry that thrives on failure (iMarc, 2024).
But here's what's truly alarming - despite all this focus on food, we're losing the most vital part of the process. Eating has been stripped of context, culture, and meaning.
The devastating result? People cycle through diets, develop disordered relationships with food, and become increasingly alienated from one of life's most fundamental pleasures and necessities.
This Is Where OTs Belong
Eating isn't just fuel to be measured and controlled. It's an occupation - a complex, meaningful activity involving preparation, cultural expression, connection, sensory experience, and exploration. Every meal represents planning, shopping, preparing, sharing, and experiencing food within the context of someone's life.
Yet we've allowed others to define eating entirely through medical and commercial lenses.
The tragedy is that without occupational understanding, every intervention misses the point. People don't just need to know what to eat - they need to rebuild their relationship with eating as a meaningful, enjoyable part of their daily life.
What's Missing Without Us
- Diet programs focus on restriction but ignore food's role in identity and culture
- Blood tests provide information but doesn't address occupational barriers
- Weight management sees numbers but misses the lived experience of eating
- Apps track intake but fragment the holistic nature of food in people's lives
The result? People never develop the occupational skills that create lasting, joyful relationships with food.
This Is Where We Are at LifeSetGo
We believe OTs can only transform eating when we stand united with clarity as a profession. Right now the diet industry profits from approaches that ignore occupational reality. We believe every OT needs the confidence to reclaim eating as our domain.
This is our calling. Eating is not fuel to be optimised or a problem to be controlled. It's an occupation - the daily practice of nourishing ourselves through preparation, sharing, tasting, and connecting with food as culture, comfort, and life itself. We can guide people back to food as a source of joy, identity, and authentic nourishment, not another battlefield of restriction and failure.
When we unite, we don't just help individuals eat better, we offer society a completely different paradigm for understanding nourishment.
👉 Ready to reclaim confidence? This starts with mastering occupational case formulation - the clarity that keeps us focused on occupation while others chase symptoms. Train with LifeSetGo.