Are you a counterintuitive eater?

Our columnist Rosie Green on discovering that her 'healthy' and 'slimming' eating habits are anything but

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Along with some suspect fashion trends (visible thongs and ravaged eyebrows), the Nineties and Noughties gave a lot of us questionable eating habits.

In an effort to emulate the bodies of Kate Moss (skinny) and then Gisele (skinny with big boobs), lots of us adopted nutritionally inadvisable diets (cabbage soup) and embraced a world of rice cakes, calorie counting, zero-sugar sodas and low-fat everything.

Recently, I was on a health retreat with wellness influencers and journalists, women who have “glow with health” in their job description, and I was struck by how many of us were fighting against ingrained eating patterns, ones we have always believed are “good” and “slimming” but are actually unhealthy and can trigger weight gain.

In an illuminating one-to-one session with the nutritionist Rhian Stephenson, founder of the supplement brand Artah and the retreat’s host, she helped me to see how many of my own habits were counterintuitive. And misery-making.

She said: "Midlife women often adopt strategies that sabotage metabolism – using excessive artificial sweeteners, focusing on low-calorie, ultra-processed foods and remaining fearful of healthy fats."