How Strong is Your Diet Mentality?

Did you know that the first principle of Intuitive Eating is “Reject the Diet Mentality”?

This step is critical because having a dieter’s mindset disconnects you from your body's wisdom, including your own internal cues that tell you what, when and how much to eat.

When you operate with a diet mentality, you eat according to external factors and rules (e.g., calories, points, macros, good/bad foods, fixed schedule, etc.) rather than honoring your body’s needs, desires and preferences.

Approaching food with a diet mentality can make eating a fraught, unsatisfying experience and lead to a disordered relationship with food.

Ultimately, having a diet mentality erodes your ability to trust yourself, your body and your instincts, and negatively impacts your physical and psychological wellbeing.

Diet vs. Non-Diet Mentality
Even if you aren’t on an official diet or have never dieted, you may still have a diet mentality due to our pervasive, insidious diet culture. It’s the voice in your head that sounds like this:

Diet Mentality

Non-Diet Mentality
In contrast, the non-diet mentality—that is, the Intuitive Eater voice—sounds like this:

  • Am I hungry?

  • I can have anything. What do I want?

  • What sounds yummy and nourishing?

  • Do I want this particular food?

  • Will I feel deprived if I don’t eat it?

  • Will this food satisfy and sustain me?

  • Is this tasty? Does it hit the spot?

  • I trust my body to tell me what it needs.

  • I honor my hunger and cravings.

  • I'm feeling full. I can have more later if I want.

  • I don't feel guilty, anxious or ashamed about my eating.

Where do you stand with the diet mentality?

This Feels Scary!
Rejecting the diet mentality can feel pretty scary, especially if you’ve been trapped in this mindset for a long time. You may fear that if you let it go, you’ll lose control, eat “badly,” never stop eating, and completely go to pot.

These fears are totally understandable.

In time, however, they will start to fade as you realize that it's the dieting mindset—the deprivation, restriction, micro-management, hyper-vigilance, moralism—that prevents you from having a peaceful, intuitive relationship with food and your body.

Your fears will further subside as you reconnect with your inner signals—your hunger, fullness, desires and satisfaction—and rediscover that your body is the only guide you need when it comes to nourishing yourself.

What I'm Tuning Into [Top Reads & Podcasts]

Every now and then, I like to share what I’m tuning into when it comes to diet culture, body diversity, Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size and more.

It’s my hope that the following content will help support you on your journey toward a more peaceful relationship with food and your body.

Why Most Diets Don’t Work—and What to Try Instead [Popular Science]
“Something society doesn’t quite grasp yet is that weight is really, really hard to control. When somebody gains weight or their diet fails, they blame themselves rather than the thousands of forces that are conspiring to keep that weight on and to make you gain more weight.”

How to Help Your Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Food [Popular Science]
“Because it’s so easy for caregivers to pass on their own disordered eating patterns, an important first step in setting healthy standards for your child’s eating is to examine your own relationship with food.”

The Dieter’s Diet [Bustle]
”Noom, the popular weight loss app, promises to teach you how to eat better, not less. (Except also, eat less.)”

For more on this, head on over to Virginia Sole-Smith’s follow-up piece. I also highly recommend her book, The Eating Instinct.

How
to Fight Diet Culture at Your Family Dinner Table [Outside]
“Our kids are listening when we talk about ‘earning’ dessert with a hard hike or long bike ride, or when we call their Goldfish crackers ‘junk’ and try to steer them toward farmers’ market veggies instead. And they’re watching when we cut out gluten or stare critically at our thighs or our abs in the mirror."

You’re Showing Up in the World, and Nobody is Fooled [Burnt Toast]
If getting dressed in the morning, shopping for clothes and following fashion “rules” are all major stressors for you, then tune into this conversation between writer Virginia Sole-Smith and weight-inclusive personal stylist Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet.

“These ideas that that style is not for you, that you can’t take up space, that you can’t just be the physical person that you are, and that you should strive for an optical illusion that makes you appear smaller, which we then call 'flattering.' And that 'flattering' should be the priority above all else.”

Weight-Focused ‘Workplace Wellness’ Programs Drive Stigma and Inequity. Let’s Leave Them Behind [Self]
“Life is hard enough for workers of all kinds. Weight-focused workplace wellness programs could harm employees’ mental health in the short term, their physical health in the long term, and their pay in the immediate future. As we return to in-person work, let’s make the choice to decrease stigma and increase equity. Let’s leave workplace wellness programs in the past where they belong.”

I’m a big fan of all of Aubrey Gordon’s (a.k.a. Your Fat Friend) work and encourage you to check out her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, and her highly rated podcast, Maintenance Phase.

I hope you find this content to be informative, insightful and, ultimately, liberating. Tremendous gratitude to all of these paradigm-shifting individuals for making our world a better place.

I Don’t Want to Pass Dieting On to My Kids

Can you relate to Sandra's story?

For as long as she can remember, Sandra's mom has meticulously counted calories and carefully weighed almost everything she eats.

When her aunts visit her parent's house, the conversation is often centered on who is doing what diet and how it’s going, together celebrating their wins and commiserating over their struggles.

Their own mother, Sandra's grandma, is a very restrictive eater and frequently comments on family members’ weight and polices everyone's eating.

Sandra's dad also has a fraught relationship with food. Over the years, he’s swung numerous times from eating everything to restricting something, whether it’s fat, carbs or the hours he’s allowed to eat.

At the age of 11, Sandra's mom took her to her first weight-loss meeting.

Although she felt a little weird being the only kid in the room, she also felt inspired by the success stories the women in the circle shared, especially when everyone cheered and clapped.

It felt good to be a part of their club and to be doing something to fix her apparently problematic body.

Ending the Legacy

Stepping into that weight-loss clinic as a young girl launched Sandra on the dieting rollercoaster. Since then, she’s tried every diet under the sun. After more than 20 years of yo-yo dieting, she’s hit rock bottom.

Even though she doesn’t like her body, she can’t stand the thought of going on one more diet. More than anything, she can’t stand the thought of passing her family’s legacy of body shame and dieting on to her kids.

Many of my clients who are thinking about starting a family or already have kids express their desire to protect their children from our harmful diet culture. They don’t want them to suffer the way they have.

This is also true for many of my clients who don’t have children but have kids in their life, whether it’s their nieces, nephews, friends’ kids, students or team members.

And it’s true for my clients who didn’t grow up in a family entrenched in diet culture yet didn't escape its pervasive clutches and are deeply motivated by the idea of not handing down their food and body challenges.

I get really excited when my clients share this desire with me because I know the positive ripple effect that can occur when just one person heals their relationship with food and their body, how doing so can put an end to a history of disordered eating and anti-fat bias.

What Kind of Role Model?

For my clients with this goal, we spend time exploring what type of role model they want to be when it comes to food and bodies.

We talk about how they can reclaim their ability to eat intuitively while helping the kids in their life maintain their ability to do so.

Then we do the challenging yet rewarding work that’s required to recover from diet culture and build a peaceful relationship with food and their body, one that they’re excited to pass along.