The Cultural Obsession with Dieting
We are a diet-obsessed culture, plain and simple. There are thousands of diets to choose from, and they promise that, if you have the right amount of discipline, you will get thinner, and therefore happier. As a mental health professional specializing in eating disorders and disordered eating, and as a certified personal trainer with years of experience in commercial gyms- I can tell you first hand that diets do more harm than good. The harm that the dieting mentality imposes on our bodies and psyches is profound.
Quick Summary of DIETING BEHAVIORS:
All diets have core similarities. They are based on the restriction of food.
Diets tell you:
what to eat
when to eat
how much to eat
This mindset teaches you to rely on external diet rules to inform your eating habits, usually with no regard for how your body actually feels.
And since we’re on the topic of feelings, let’s talk briefly about how dieting makes you feel. In my live Never Diet Again Seminars, participants named the following symptoms:
Diet Symptoms and Experiences:
Guilt
Shame (“cheating” or binges)
Fatigue, Tired, Drowsy
Irritabile
Hungry
Hangry
Food-obsessed
Eating in secret, hiding or hoarding food
Lacking “willpower”
Rebellious
Feeling like a “failure”
Hungry deserves a second mention
Lonely (socially isolated)
Night bingeing behaviors
Rampant, uncontrollable cravings
Mentally foggy, easily confused or “thrown off”
Just thinking about dieting brings on cravings/urges for “sinful” foods
Having little TRUST in self with food
Feeling that you don’t deserve to eat
Shortened dieting duration
Last Supper eating (the binges that precede the next diet)
Sluggish metabolism
Using caffeine to survive the day
The Reality of Dieting
Food is a central component of life. You need it to live. This is why “food addiction” is not real. When you live within a dieting mentality, you are committing to engage in war with food and on your body.
Perhaps you count calories, or obsess over your body shape. You are certainly not alone with this. And there’s nothing wrong with you. All of the “symptoms” that I listed above are actually normal responses to dieting.
There is Nothing Wrong With You
All of the aforementioned symptoms and feelings associated with dieting are actually normal human responses to food restriction and feelings of deprivation.
Please hear this: you are not a failure; there is nothing inherently wrong with you. You are human, and this is human behavior in response to the mental and physical stress that dieting imposes.
How Diets Sabotage Your Life, Body, and Mental Health
Dieting is a form of short-term starvation.
While a dieting body may not necessarily look like a starving person, the “symptoms” from dieting closely resemble the starvation state.
The body does not know that the starvation is self-imposed, and adapts to this state of famine. The need for food is so essential and primal that if you aren’t getting enough, your body naturally compensates with powerful 1.) biological and 2.) psychological mechanisms. In other words, your body is evolved to ensure your survival by making you get food at any and all costs.
This is when the intense food cravings kick in. You become obsessed with food. And when you have the opportunity to really eat, the experience of eating becomes so intense that it feels uncontrollable and desperate. In the moment of of biological hunger, all intensions to diet and to be thin are fleeting and irrelevant. In these moments, eating is the only thing that matters.
You Can’t Fight Your Biology
When the body is starving, it needs to be nourished. Restriction (e.g., dieting) and starvation are the same to your primal brain. Binges that follow a period of restriction are not a failing of your discipline. It’s your biological will to survive. You can’t help it. If this idea makes you feel angry, then you're on the right track to understanding that it's not you that is the failure- it is your diets and our culture that is the failure, because they wrongly tell us that dieting is the answer to the problems of life.
This explains the cycle of dieting: hunger from your diet leads to overeating.
What many people believe to be an issue of willpower, is instead a biological drive. The power and intensity of the biological eating drive should not be underestimated.
Dieting Causes Psychological Deprivation
Most diets impose a strict limitation upon specific foods.
Ironically, cravings run rampant as soon as we’re restricted from any type of substance. This is due to the psychological effect of deprivation, which induces you to exhibit behaviors that are extremely unlike your normal patterns. This is when you might horde particular foods, or eat compulsively, or in secret. It happens all the time!
When you rigidly restrict a particular food, it creates an obsession of that very food. With each dieting day that passes, cravings build up.
Can you imagine what happens next? Rebound Eating. Once again, the dieting mentality predicts overeating.
How Dieting Wrecks Your Self-Worth
Last thing: I’d also like to say a bit about self-esteem, confidence, and dieting. A scientific way of talking about confidence is exploring self-efficacy, which is the belief that you are capable and worthy of success.
Self-Efficacy aka Self-Esteem
Dieting increases your sense of failure and erodes self-esteem. Think about all of the times you have felt bad about yourself in response to dieting “failures” or binges on off-limit foods. After awhile, you may begin to believe that because you are so severely lacking "discipline" or "willpower" that you don’t deserve to feel good, or to have good things in your life. Self-worth can plummet, and you may adopt a belief that you are not capable or worthy of success- not only in regard to weight loss, but in your entire life.
Dieting teaches you to rely on external sources of information (e.g., diet rules) to inform your eating choices. After eating like this for a while, you lose connection with your body because you have learned to ignore hunger pangs.
You lose the fundamental, intuitive trust in yourself and your body. This, in my opinion, is the worst side effect of dieting. You lose your compass. You learn that you are not trustworthy or capable. You develop a fear of yourself and fear of being around food. That delicious feeling of satisfaction and pleasure when eating is lost.
This is why you may have no idea that you’re hungry until you are starving. And it sets the stage for overeating, since you can’t really tell when you’re full, or satisfied. Which, again, leads to overeating and all of the unruly feelings that come with it.
This is not an exhaustive list of why diets don’t work. There is so much more. But for the purposes of this blog and our short attention spans, I’ll leave you with this quick summary:
Diets don’t/can’t work because:
1.) Your biology will always win. You WILL eat. (Severe eating disorders can be different, and I’m not talking about them here.) The more/longer you restrict, the harder you will rebound. It’s human biology.
2.) Your mind will obsess over whatever you disallow, especially if you truly want the forbidden foods. This creates an unstoppable urge to which you will eventually acquiesce- and the more/longer you resist, the harder you will binge. It’s human psychology. You can’t help it.
3.) Dieting slowly destroys your self-esteem and self-efficacy because no one can diet “successfully,” thus creating an infinite loop of restriction and bingeing, and misery and self-hatred.
End the war with food and your body.
There is Hope
There is hope and there is a better way. Please reach out for support, anytime. We are here for you.
Get Specialized Support
The ACED team is an inclusive group of specialized therapists and dietitians who can help you to heal so you can get back to living your life.
We’re here to help. Schedule your complimentary 15-20 minute phone consultation to find out if the ACED team could be a good fit for you. If you’re ready, we’ll match you with your dream team.
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