You are starting to understand the impact diet culture has had on your life, and you want to make some changes. This is such a big and scary step sometimes. Dieting may have been familiar and even kind of comfortable. The next diet made you feel hopeful that it would solve your negative body image and make you feel more in control of food. You realize that in the end it’s just made you feel out of control and like a failure. Part of what happens in binge eating disorder treatment is understanding how dieting has impacted emotional eating and binge eating. If you are interested in ending dieting here are some tips.
Tips to stop dieting
Breaking up with diet culture involves changing how you think about food and your body, and it can be a life-changing process but it does require hard work. Here’s a more detailed guide to help you make this shift:
Understand How Diet Culture Affects You
Diet culture promotes the idea that your worth is tied to your appearance, weight, and size. These beliefs can lead to negative body image and disordered eating habits. To stop dieting, it’s important to educate yourself about the harmful effects of diet culture. Books like Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, and The Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison, offer more insight and information into how diet culture impacts your physical and mental health and provides different ways of approaching food and your body. The more you understand the negative that comes with dieting, the more it can motivate you to make changes.
Reject the Diet Mentality
The diet mentality revolves around the idea that you must follow strict rules to control your body. To move away from this, commit to breaking free from dieting. Recognize that your self-worth is not determined by your appearance or weight. Focus on body respect and body neutrality—accepting and appreciating your body without judgment. This shift in mindset can help you develop a more positive and compassionate view of yourself.
Listen to Your Body
Diet culture often teaches you to ignore your body’s signs and signals and follow rigid eating rules. Instead, practice listening to your body’s hunger and fullness cues. Intuitive eating involves eating based on what your body needs rather than a strict set of rules. This means eating when you’re hungry stopping when you’re full, and being kind to yourself throughout the process especially while you are learning. Learning to trust and respond to your body is such an important step in breaking free of dieting.
Avoid Diet Culture Talk
Pay attention to how often diet-related conversations come up in your life, whether they’re about body image, dieting, or labeling foods as “good” or “bad.” These conversations can reinforce diet culture and negatively impact your self-esteem. Try to limit time spent with people who engage in diet talk or change the conversations to more positive topics. Surrounding yourself with supportive and body-positive people can help you stay focused on your goals. Remember your language matters.
Consider Seeing an Eating Disorder Therapist
Therapy can provide support in your efforts to break away from diet culture. Even if you don’t have an eating disorder, working with a therapist who specializes in eating issues can help you improve your relationship with food and body image. An eating disorder therapist can offer different ways of coping and support to help you stop the cycle of dieting and help you develop a healthier mindset. Therapy also helps to address any underlying issues that contribute to your relationship with food and a negative body image.
Binge Eating Disorder Treatment in Utah can help you break up with diet culture
Going to Therapy, whether you have an eating disorder or not, helps you stop dieting and build a better relationship with food. Dieting leads to you feeling like a failure or that you’re not good enough. It can become easy to believe those things even when it’s not true. We can talk about your thoughts and feelings about food and your body in therapy. We’ll figure out why you diet and find different ways of coping. Binge eating disorder treatment can teach you to listen to your body's hunger and fullness signals, reduce emotional eating, and help you be more self-compassionate.
Start working with an eating disorder therapist in Utah
You don’t have to keep dieting and keep feeling miserable about yourself every time. You can feel better about yourself and your body. Binge eating disorder treatment can help. This Utah Eating Disorder Clinic has a binge eating disorder therapist who can help. To begin counseling follow the steps below:
Meet with a therapist for eating disorders
Stop dieting forever
Online Eating Disorder Therapy in Utah
Choosing online therapy in Utah can be a big step towards feeling better about yourself and your relationship with food. Research shows that online therapy works just as well as meeting in person, which is why I provide online counseling. With online eating disorder counseling, you can talk to an eating disorder therapist from home, which saves time and makes it easier to fit into your day. You won't have to worry about driving to an office, and you can feel more relaxed in a familiar place.
Online eating disorder therapy means I work with clients all throughout Utah including Logan, Salt Lake City, Heber City, Provo, Cedar City, St. George, and more.
About the Author
Ashlee Hunt is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and the owner of Maple Canyon Therapy, an online counseling practice based in Utah. She holds two bachelor’s degrees from Southern Utah University, one in Psychology and the other in Family Life and Human Development. Ashlee furthered her education by earning a master’s degree in Social Work from Utah State University. With extensive experience working with eating disorders at all levels of care, Ashlee is dedicated to supporting women in their journeys toward recovery and well-being. Through her practice, she provides compassionate and personalized therapy, drawing on her deep knowledge and commitment to mental health. In her free time, Ashlee enjoys spending time with her husband and two Goldendoodles and riding her e-bike through Snow Canyon State Park.