dieting

You went through a lot of that — dieting, extreme exercise routines — through the ’80s and ’90s ...

I had a young flight attendant, a gentleman, come up to me and say, “This movie made me look at what I was doing, the dieting and all these things, and I realized I just had to stop, go down a completely different path and be more kind to myself.”

Because there’s so little research on budgeting itself, I looked to similarities between budgeting and another restrictive practice — dieting —where research is much more comprehensive and conclusive.

We know dieting, like budgeting, is rarely sustained and typically doesn’t lead to its long-term goals.

The Times spoke to Specter about how she realized she had an eating disorder, why she decided to ditch dieting and what happened when she began to reframe her thinking about her body.