Diet culture is a term we have heard more about over the past few years. People are becoming more aware of how harmful diet culture can be to both physical and mental health, which is a big change from the society we grew up in. In the past, there was a strong focus on constant dieting to change our bodies, lose weight, and look "better". More than ever there is recognition that dieting causes so many more problems physically and mentally, increases the prevalence of eating disorders, and negative body image. Dieting is also extremely ineffective long-term. Many experience a backlash in dieting and end up engaging in binge eating which is often what I see in my practice where I focus on binge eating disorder treatment. If you want to understand more about diet culture and how to escape it, you’ve come to the right place. Here in this guide, I’ll be answering some common questions about diet culture.
What is diet culture?
Diet culture has been around for a long time. Thousands of years even. Diet culture centers around the value of weight loss and attempts to be thin. Being thin and a focus on appearance is the most important thing and comes above both physical and mental health. Diet culture promotes being thin at whatever cost and it comes above everything else. It often attaches morals to foods and labels them as “good” or “bad” intending to avoid “bad” foods no matter what. According to diet culture, thinness reflects the epitome of beauty, success, and status. Diet culture makes disordered eating seem normal. Cutting out entire food groups, extreme dieting, and restrictive eating are typical practices in diet culture. Diet culture perpetuates unhealthy beauty standards leading to negative body image and low self-esteem. The diet industry is estimated to make $255 billion dollars per year. Diet culture impacts the development of eating disorders including binge eating disorder.
Is diet culture good or bad?
Diet culture is extremely harmful. There’s no way around it. Diet culture is responsible for countless people developing eating disorders, self-hatred, and negative body image. It impacts people’s mental health in a negative way. Here are some reasons why.
Reasons diet culture is harmful:
This is not a comprehensive list but are some of the ways diet culture has a negative impact.
Encourages disordered eating
Diet culture often encourages restrictive eating, cutting out certain foods and even food groups. It encourages ignoring hunger and fullness cues and neglects to focus on physical and mental health. This focus increases anxiety around food and is difficult to let go of once you’re entrenched.
Promotes food guilt
Diet culture makes food about morals. It labels foods as “good” or “bad” “healthy” or “unhealthy”. This leads to feelings of guilt or shame when someone breaks one of these food rules despite the biological drive to do so.
Fuels Negative body image
Because diet culture values and idealizes thinness, it promotes looking negatively at those with larger bodies leading to negative body image. It neglects a focus on body neutrality and body respect and heavily emphasizes weight loss.
Undermines trusting your own body
Diet culture is about following a rigid set of rules regardless of individual [dual needs. It reinforces ignoring external cues or listening to your own body. It does not care about your mental well-being and encourages you to focus on a set of rules solely.
What is the diet culture today?
Diet culture changes throughout time and adapts to societal standards. Presently in 2024 there is a focus on using apps to track food and exercise, wearing watches, fitness bands, and rings to calculate calories burned and steps walked. These encourage calorie counting, macro counting, and other disordered eating behaviors. Social media has a big impact on the present-day diet culture. Health and fitness influencers sell programs and courses. There is a focus on health challenges, detoxes, and exercise regimens. Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok all have influencers promoting diet culture. Diet culture also comes in disguise and is often hidden under the guise of “health and wellness” but promotes all the rigid rules and behaviors around food that are harmful. Keto, intermittent fasting, macro counting, and anti-inflammatory diets are popular right now in culture along with avoiding gluten. Most recently diet culture has evolved into weight loss injections.
What are examples of diet culture?
Along with the examples shared in the previous paragraph, examples of current diet culture influences promoting diet plans, cleanses, eating plant-based foods, a heavy focus on eating protein, and adding in a lot of expensive supplements that are not evidence-based. Eating low-fat, low-carb, and sugar-free continues to be part of diet culture. Part of present-day diet culture is referring to foods as “guilt-free”. There are countless examples of diet culture; sometimes they are sneaky and difficult to spot.
How do you break up with diet culture?
It’s not an easy process to stop dieting and engaging in diet culture but it’s worth all the effort it takes. Breaking up with diet culture often involves having a different attitude about food and body image, which often requires the help of therapy. Here are some steps to try to take away from diet culture.
Understand the impact of diet culture
It’s important to understand how diet culture is harmful to you and to others. Learning how it creates a negative relationship between body image and food. Reading the book “Intuitive Eating” and the “The Anti-Diet” can help you understand more.
Reject the diet mentality
Committing to stop dieting and to recognize how your worth and self-esteem come from outside of your appearance and weight. Focusing on treating your body with respect and creating body neutrality is important in moving away from diet culture.
Listen to your body
Diet culture teaches you to follow a strict set of guidelines around food and to ignore your body’s sensations. It’s important to start listening to your body and honoring your hunger and fullness. Practicing intuitive eating and treating your body with compassion is a key to challenging diet culture
Don’t engage in diet culture talk
You may not realize how often talking negatively about your body and labeling foods as “good” or “bad” comes up. Consider spending less time around people who do engage in this type of talk or learn to steer the conversation elsewhere positively.
Consider meeting with an eating disorder therapist in Utah
You don’t have to have an eating disorder to benefit from eating disorder therapy. This means you are working with an expert who can help you improve your relationship with food and your body image. Therapy can be life-changing and help you stop engaging in diet culture.
How does diet culture affect mental health?
Diet culture can negatively impact your mental health in more ways than you might realize. It teaches and reinforces unrealistic beauty standards that most people can't achieve and their bodies were not made to achieve. This leads to negative body image and constantly comparing yourself to others. Comparing yourself to others impacts your self-esteem and can create a belief of not feeling good enough. Diet culture encourages restrictive eating, making people obsess over food and eating, which often leads to cycles of dieting and binge eating. The pressure to stick to certain diets or avoid specific foods can cause anxiety and a negative relationship with food. Labeling foods as "good" or "bad" can make you feel guilty and ashamed when you eat certain things.
Fear of eating in front of people or in social settings because of food rules can lead to isolation and loneliness. Focusing on weight and appearance can take over and become the number one priority. This focus can take over your life leaving little room for the things you used to value and care about. Constantly thinking about food, calories, and exercise can be mentally exhausting, leaving little energy for other things.
When self-worth is tied to body size or your ability to follow a diet, it can cause pain and anxiety when you don't follow food rules or your body changes. Dieting can become part of your identity and you learn to ignore your own wants and needs. Diet culture makes it difficult to tune into your own natural hunger and fullness signals. It takes away all the enjoyment from food and creates an obsession with following diet rules. Overall, diet culture creates a cycle of anxiety, negative thoughts, and feelings about yourself, and creates a negative relationship with body image and food.
What are the problems with diet culture?
There are many problems with diet culture and the impact it can have on both men and women. Here is a list of common problems that occur because of diet culture
Common issues from diet culture
Unhealthy Relationships with Food: Diet culture promotes restrictive eating and labels foods as "good" or "bad." This can lead to disordered eating habits such as restriction, binging, purging, and more.
Obsession with body image: Diet culture tends to make people focus more on how they look above all else. Disordered eating behaviors that come from diet culture are often disguised in the name of “health” because we have been led to believe that being thin is the same thing as being healthy. This is not true.
Weight Bias: People who don't fit the ideal body type may face unfair treatment and bias. This can lead to low self-esteem, social isolation, and increased mental health risks.
Compromised physical health: Diet can encourage heavy restriction of certain foods and entire food groups. This often leads to physical symptoms because of lack of proper nutrition.
Increased anxiety and depression: Diet culture promotes unrealistic standards of beauty and negative body image, which can lead to anxiety and depression. Diet culture emphasizes focusing on strict diets and the fear of being judged by others. All of these things cause obsessive thoughts and social isolation. This constant stress and the cycle of losing and gaining weight make people feel like failures and erode at their self-esteem making them feel like they don’t have willpower or aren’t trying hard enough.
Unsustainable way of eating: Diets are not sustainable. Up to 95 percent of people gain all the weight back and more within two years. The success rate of diets is extremely low. Please don’t convince yourself that you’ll beat the odds and be on the other side of the statistic. One thing is certain is there’s a high chance you’ll walk away with a disordered relationship with food.
Negative body image: Constant exposure to unrealistic body standards can make people unhappy with their bodies, leading to negative body image, anxiety, depression, and comparison to others.
How do you say no to diet culture?
When it comes to quitting dieting and saying no to the appeals of diet culture it involves making changes. The focus will involve changing your beliefs about food, appearance, and your body and shifting more to a focus on health. Here are some ways to say no to diet culture:
Focus on Intuitive Eating:
Intuitive eating is a concept that involves learning to listen to your body’s cues for hunger and fullness and not following restrictive diets. Being able to tune back into your body may take some time especially because often when you’ve been restricting and dieting your body has learned not to waste time or energy on sending you those messages. The good news is with time your body will trust you again and send you those messages.
Focus on Health, Not Weight:
Shift your focus from losing weight to improving overall health. Focusing on health-promoting behaviors rather than on weight loss has been shown to have better outcomes in improving health. This may be a significant shift for you but it has shown to be better also for your mental health.
Stop putting morals on food:
Stop labeling foods as "good" or "bad." All foods can fit into a balanced diet. You can enjoy a variety of foods without guilt or shame. Your language and beliefs around food matters. Shifting the way you think and speak about food is important.
Practice Self-Compassion:
Your body has been through a lot when it comes to diets. If I were to guess somewhere in your life you’ve been told or led to believe there’s something wrong with your body and it needs to be changed. This is a painful thing to experience. Be kind to yourself and your body. Recognize that everyone's body is different and that health is not determined by size or appearance.
Surround Yourself with Support:
Surrounding yourself with people who don’t engage in dieting or body bashing is going to be better for your emotional well-being. Finding others who believe the same way you do and are body-neutral is going to help you quit dieting.
Challenge Negative Thoughts:
Changing your thoughts and beliefs about body, shape, and size along with health and eating can take a lot of work but it’s also one of the most important steps. Being able to make these changes involves the support of others.
Go to eating disorder therapy in Utah:
If you're struggling to break free from diet culture on your own, consider seeking help from an eating disorder therapist who focuses on eating intuitive eating health at every size, and help you be more body neutral. You don’t have to have an eating disorder to benefit from seeing this type of therapist.
What is the alternative to diet culture?
An alternative to diet culture is focusing on overall health and mental health instead of just weight or appearance. This approach includes intuitive eating. Intuitive eating means eating a variety of foods while tuning into the body’s signals without strict rules. There is a book that can help you understand the principles of intuitive eating called “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach”. The Health at Every Size (HAES) movement promotes a focus on health outside of weight and size. The HAES movement is about utilizing healthy habits rather than losing weight. Mindful eating encourages paying attention to the experience of eating and enjoying your food. Mindful movement is an aspect of moving your body in ways that you enjoy. Exercise should not be to punish yourself or because of obligation. Exercise and movement should be something you like and can include a variety of different exercises rather than being rigid about a specific type.
Binge eating disorder treatment in Utah can help you break free of diet culture
Going to therapy can make all the difference when you’re trying to leave behind dieting and feel better about yourself and eating. As an eating disorder, I can help you understand the underlying issues that have led you to use dieting and how you’ve learned to place so much importance on your appearance. You are so much more than that and you don’t have to keep ending up in the same cycle you’ve been in over and over again. Whether you find yourself binging or restricting, or a mix of both. You can find a much more balanced place with food and therapy can help.
Online eating disorder therapy in Utah
Some people worry that online therapy is not as good as meeting in person. However, that’s not true. I provide online therapy in Utah because I care so much about reaching everyone who needs access to this specialized therapy regardless of where you are in Utah. It’s just as effective as in-person therapy and much more convenient. You may be more willing to get help if you don’t have to worry about traveling long distances or commuting and that makes all the difference. I have been providing online therapy for several years and know how to connect with my clients in this way.
Online counseling also means that I work with clients all over the state of Utah including St. George, Cedar City, Heber City, Provo, Logan, Salt Lake City, and more.
Start working with an eating disorder therapist in Utah
You don’t have to keep getting caught in the cycle of dieting and hating your body. Therapy can help. This Utah Counseling Center has an eating disorder therapist who specializes in improving your relationship with food through therapy including binge eating disorder treatment. To start counseling follow the steps below:
Meet with a therapist for eating disorders
Break free from diet culture
About the Author
Ashlee Hunt LCSW is the founder of Maple Canyon Therapy originally located in Spanish Fork, Utah on Main Street near Glade’s Drive Inn. Maple Canyon Therapy now provides online therapy all throughout the state of Utah. Ashlee has two bachelor’s degrees from Southern Utah University: one in psychology and another in family life and human development. She received her master’s degree in social work from Utah State University. Ashlee has worked with eating disorders at all levels of care from inpatient treatment to outpatient therapy and particularly enjoys working with those with binge eating disorder. She loves helping women break free from diet culture and to make peace with their bodies again.