I went on my first diet when I was eight. I quickly learned how to live in a constant state of dieting, as my parents thought this would help me with my weight and relationship with food in the future. The results, however, were the exact opposite, because I’ve now spent my entire life battling the diet mentality.
The diet mentality is a manifestation of diet culture, which encourages diets and consistent dieting, often promoting unhealthy behaviors like restriction and unsustainable methods of weight loss. The resulting mentality invokes an all-or-nothing behavior, which can quickly lead to binging and other disordered eating. It also creates an obsession with weight, body image and food intake, which makes it nearly impossible to yield a healthy relationship with food.
The scariest part about this? The diet industry is fully aware of the harmful cycle but continues to promote this lifestyle because the more we fail, the more money we will spend to try again.
Diets, simply put, are short-term fixes. Companies like Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers tell you that you can lose 15 pounds in 30 days, knowing full well that this is not a program you will stick with for the rest of your life. In order to scientifically craft successful weight loss techniques, these companies must have extensive knowledge about nutrition, which means they understand the harmful effects that unsustainable eating can have. These nutritional experts are sacrificing your physical and mental wellbeing in order to profit from your dieting failures.
The more you restrict yourself during a diet, the more you will “fall off the wagon,” and the more weight you will gain. This perceived failure to diet will cause you to continue starting over, continue spending time and money on new programs, apps and workout plans and continue berating yourself when you inevitably give up.
Here’s the secret, though — this cycle is not fixed by dieting, it was created by dieting. The word “successful diet” is an oxymoron, because you are not meant to succeed in this industry.
The Science Behind Dieting
Don’t believe me yet? Let’s break this down scientifically. VIM Fitness outlines three specific factors that contribute to diet failure:
#1: Dieting slows down your metabolism
Because diets only work due to restriction and/or cutting out certain foods (The Keto Diet insists that stopping your carb intake will make you lose weight, some diets limit sugary foods and drinks, etc.), your body essentially goes into survival mode. It recognizes that calories are being restricted, and acts accordingly by breaking down your food much slower than before.
This is why you might lose weight quickly on a diet but suddenly notice little change, or sometimes gain even when your habits have not fluctuated. Some people restrict more drastically when this happens which leads to increasingly dangerous effects or quitting altogether out of frustration. However, as we’ve seen time and time again, they will likely return to dieting again shortly.
#2 Your hormones are affected
Have you ever wondered why diets make you so cranky and irritable? It’s partially due to hunger or the lack of eating your favorite foods. It’s also caused by an alteration in your body’s chemistry.
Even diets that don’t leave you feeling excessively hungry at first will confuse your body, because at the end of the day if you’re not eating the things that your body needs like carbs, fats and a dose of your go-to junk food, it will cause your hunger cues to skyrocket. You will begin feeling hungrier faster, and craving more foods that you “shouldn’t” have.
#3 You want what you can’t have
At this point, I hope I’ve made it clear that you can not lose weight quickly without doing it in an unhealthy or unsustainable way. It’s just not possible. Therefore, your body will continue to crave what it cannot have, until you are forced to either give in or just live miserably until inevitably, you still give in.
It’s common for dieters to experience severe fits of binging which consists of eating large amounts of food until feeling uncomfortably full because they have been restricting for so long. This is just one of the harmful outcomes that dieting can harvest, but it can almost immediately create an unhealthy cycle of disordered eating.
Listen to your body
One common trope that diet companies use to push you past your restriction limits is the guilt of willpower. Insisting that good dieters have developed solid willpower, helping them say no to their cravings, instills that if you keep pushing and denying yourself what your body wants, you will succeed.
However, this type of willpower does not exist, and is simply a ploy to trick you into depriving your body of what it needs. Listen to your body, not to the photoshopped fitness model or paid actor on TV telling you to “stay strong.”
The main argument that people make against canceling diet culture is that “It works for some people!” While this may seem true on the surface, not everyone fits into the 95% who gain all or more of their weight back after a diet ends.
I would argue that it is impossible to have a healthy relationship with food without beating the diet mentality. In this detrimental mindset, you understand that the sole purpose of your food intake, or lack thereof, is to control your weight. When food and weight begin feeding off of each other, increasingly linked together in your mind, it will become difficult to separate your physical appearance from nourishment.
Even companies that seem helpful and health-focused like My Fitness Pal and Noom tell you that there are good foods that you can eat, and there are bad foods to stay away from. Your body does not resonate with good and bad foods when they are enjoyed in moderation and through a balanced diet, but your brain makes it difficult to create this balance on any kind of dieting program.
Counting calories can also be an extremely slippery slope; it’s difficult to do this without becoming obsessed with the numbers, and not being able to enjoy food without doing mental calculations. Health is not a number, and unfortunately, many weight loss apps and websites are telling you to eat much less than you should be.
1200-1400 calories per day is not healthy for anyone over the age of six, but this seems to be a go-to number in weight loss. Sure, you might see results, but only because you are virtually on the brink of starvation. Despite what this industry has told you, caloric deficits are not the only way to lose weight!
Takeaway:
Weight loss is an unhealthy obsession for a majority of our society, and it seems that diet culture is heavily to blame. Eating disorder rates are rampant and continuing to rise in the United States, but disordered eating and stressful relationships with food are even more commonplace because we are so accustomed to diet culture.
If getting in shape or losing weight is truly a necessity in your life, this can be achieved through listening to your body and creating a balanced, healthy relationship between food, your body and your mind. Losing weight quickly is not sustainable, and it is never healthy. True, effective changes in your body will only happen when necessary.
If you are eating intuitively, listening to your hunger cues and living a balanced lifestyle and you still cannot lose weight, that’s your body telling you that you’re already in the right place. Continuing to push yourself further, eating less and less over time, or constantly changing your dieting habits is detrimental to your mental and physical health.
Reach out to a doctor or nutritionist if you feel that you cannot build a stable relationship with food on your own. you deserve to take control of your food choices and find harmony between your mind and body. It’s time to break up with your diet before it breaks you.
References:
The science behind why diets don’t work. (2018, September 13). Retrieved March 31, 2021.
Weiss, Christina. “Statistics on Dieting and Eating Disorders.” Montenido.com, Retrieved March 31, 2021.