I Was a Dieter in Disguise. How About You?

After years of jumping from one diet to the next, Valerie hit rock bottom. 

Fed up with the weight-loss roller coaster and obsessing over every morsel she ate, she swore off dieting forever. 

Yet, months after quitting, she still shuns carbs, avoids snacking and seconds, never eats after 6:30 p.m., and runs an extra mile whenever she has dessert.

Valerie is a pseudo-dieter.

She genuinely believes she’s given up dieting, yet she continues to engage in dieting behaviors. 

As a result, she still experiences many of the side effects of dieting, including thinking about food all the time, struggling with intense cravings, feeling out of control with her “trigger foods” (i.e., ice cream and chips), and feeling frustrated, guilty and ashamed when she thinks she’s eaten badly.

Deeply Ingrained
As seen with Valerie, the diet mentality can be so deeply ingrained—or hidden under the guise of “health," "wellness,” "lifestyle" or “biohacking”—that you may not realize you're actually pseudo-dieting and that your restrictive eating behaviors are making you vulnerable to the same physical and psychological damage dieting causes

Falling into the pseudo-dieting trap is completely understandable given how prevalent and seductive our diet and wellness cultures are.

Here are some more examples of pseudo-dieting:

  • Restricting your eating to include only “clean,” “whole” or “unprocessed” foods.

  • Switching from calorie counting to macro counting for weight loss.

  • Limiting carb or fat grams regardless of what you want or what your body needs.

  • Determining what you deserve to eat based on what you ate earlier or if you exercised, rather than your hunger level.

  • Compensating for eating certain foods by doing extra exercise, skipping your next meal or eating less tomorrow.

  • Attempting to manage your weight with detoxes and cleanses.

  • Allowing yourself to only eat at certain times of the day despite your hunger level.

  • Becoming vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. for the purpose of losing weight.

  • Bringing your own food to parties so you aren’t tempted to eat anything else.

  • Weighing and measuring your food to limit how much of it you eat.

Do you see yourself in any of these behaviors? I certainly do. My own journey included years of pseudo-dieting. Unbeknownst to me, I was a dieter in disguise!

A Dieter in Disguise
After I stopped focusing on calories in/calories out, I became obsessed with only eating “clean” foods. I also unnecessarily cut out gluten and dairy. I never considered any of this dieting. 

Instead, I claimed my restrictions were all in the name of wellness even though secretly my goal was weight loss. I mean, come on. If I thought eliminating gluten and dairy could possibly lead to weight gain, I would never have done it.

As Christy Harrison, the author of Anti-Diet and The Wellness Trap says, "If it involves restricting how you eat, demonizes certain food and is centered around the size of your body, it’s a diet."

Same Adverse Outcomes
Looking back, I can see how my pseudo-dieting resulted in the same adverse outcomes as my more official calorie-counting dieting. 

I still adhered to rigid food rules, fixated on food, skipped social events out of fear of eating “bad” foods, binged on sweets when I let myself have them, got angry at myself when I felt I ate poorly, overexercised to make up for my eating, and so on.

Releasing the Diet Mentality
Just like bona fide dieting, pseudo-dieting can disconnect you from your body inhibiting your ability to hear and honor the messages it’s sending you. 

And, as was the case with Valerie and me, all restrictive eating, no matter what it’s called, leaves you vulnerable to the pitfalls of dieting, from binge eating and weight cycling to food preoccupation and social withdrawal.

Escaping the dieting roller coaster and experiencing true food freedom requires letting go of your diet mentality and relearning how to nourish your body based on its internal cues versus external rules—that is, eat intuitively.

As pseudo-dieting behaviors can be quite subtle and disentangling from our pervasive, insidious diet culture can be very difficult (but not impossible!), it can be helpful to get support from an Intuitive Eating counselor, therapist, dietician or nutritionist so you can truly let go of dieting in all its various forms once and for all.

That Wasn't Worth the Calories. Sound Familiar?

Did you know 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 when, what and how much to eat.

When you operate with a diet mentality, you eat according to external factors (e.g., food rules, good/bad foods, macros, calories, points, time restrictions, 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 likely still have a diet mentality due to our pervasive, insidious diet culture.

Diet Mentality
The diet mentality is the voice in your head that sounds like this:

  • I want it, but I shouldn’t have it.

  • I don’t deserve to eat it.

  • Will this make me gain weight?

  • What am I allowed to eat?

  • I feel guilty about eating this food.

  • I’ll have to make up for eating this.

  • can’t be trusted with certain foods.

  • No one can see me eat this.

  • I had a big lunch so I should skip dinner.

  • I’m hungry but I shouldn’t eat anything.

  • I ate so good/clean today.

  • I’ve earned the right to eat this. 

  • That wasn’t worth the calories.

  • Tomorrow, I’m getting back on track

Do any of these statements sound familiar? 

The diet mentality is so normalized in our culture that many people aren’t even aware of the role it plays in their lives and how harmful its presence can be.

Where do you stand with the diet mentality? How strong is yours? How does it impact your eating and relationship with food?

Non-Diet Mentality

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

  • I can have it. Do I want it?

  • How hungry am I?

  • What am I in the mood for?

  • Will this food satisfy and sustain me?

  • Is this tasty? Does it hit the spot?

  • How does this food feel in my body?

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

  • I honor my hunger and cravings to the best of my ability.

  • It’s totally okay to eat when I’m not hungry.

  • I love how much pleasure food gives me.

  • There’s no reason to feel guilty or ashamed about my eating.

  • Food can be such a great source of comfort.

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

Do any of these statements sound like you? How present is your Intuitive Eater voice compared to your diet mentality voice?

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. 

Your fears are totally understandable. 

In time, however, they will start to fade as you realize that it's the diet mentality—the rules, restriction, deprivation, good/bad foods, moralism—that prevents you from having a peaceful, pleasurable and intuitive relationship with food.

Your fears will further subside as your Intuitive Eating voice becomes stronger than your diet mentality. 

By reconnecting with your innate sense, internal cues and individual experiences—your instincts, desires, hunger, fullness, satisfaction, preferences—you’ll rediscover that you and your body can be trusted to guide your eating. 

This Always Surprises My Clients. Who Forgets About Brownies?

My clients are often surprised—if not shocked—to discover they have forgotten about a food that once felt like it had so much power over them.

Their experiences sound something like this:

  • I can’t believe I forgot about the cookies in my cupboard! That’s never happened before.
     

  • My favorite chips actually went stale before I finished them. Typically, I'd fixate on them and eat the entire bag right away.
     

  • The chocolate in my pantry no longer calls for me all day long. I rarely think about it!
     

  • Shockingly, I found a pint of ice cream in my freezer that I totally forgot about!
     

  • I can’t believe the bread went moldy. It’s never lasted long enough to do that before.
     

  • I was so surprised to find a half-eaten candy bar in my bag that I bought a few weeks ago. 

This doesn’t happen because my clients are just really forgetful people.

It happens because they started giving themselves unconditional permission to eat.

Food Loses Its Power
Feeling obsessed with or controlled by food is not a sign of weakness or a lack of willpower and self-discipline. It’s a natural outcome of dieting and deprivation.

When you give yourself unconditional permission to eat what you want when you want, food—especially your forbidden foods—loses its power.

The more you eat a forbidden food and trust that you can have it when you want it (assuming you have access to it and no dietary restrictions*), the more its allure and charge wears off.

The food becomes neutral. It’s no longer a big deal.

You enjoy it when you want it and forget about it when you don’t.

Mel's Brownie Story
Here's how my client Mel describes her experience...

“In the past, if my partner made a pan of brownies, I wouldn't have been able to concentrate on work knowing they were on the counter. In fact, I'd sneak into the kitchen multiple times a day to shave a little off the row hoping no one would notice. 

Now that I'm letting myself eat sweets whenever I want them and without telling myself I'm being bad or that I have to make up for it by going on a diet or working out more, I don't even think about the brownies until I'm ready to enjoy them with my family. Sometimes, I even forget we have them!

The experience is so much more satisfying because I no longer feel obsessed, powerless and out of control."

Won’t Work for Me
It’s completely understandable if you have doubts that this could ever be true for you, especially if you have a long history of dieting and a long list of forbidden foods, food rules and food fears.

My new clients look at me in disbelief when I share stories like these. They can’t imagine it for themselves.

Inevitably, as they make peace with food and trust nothing is off-limits, they are pleasantly surprised that they, too, no longer feel obsessed with, distracted by or controlled by food.

My clients don’t have any magical powers.

What they do have is a deep desire to have a more liberating, satisfying and peaceful relationship with food accompanied by a steadfast commitment to doing the often hard, messy work needed to attain it.

*Of course, a food may need to be off-limits due to a medical condition, such as a peanut allergy or celiac disease. Some people find that if this is the case, they have little to no desire to consume the food due to the potential negative health consequences. However, this isn’t always easy and if it’s something you struggle with, I recommend seeking support from an Intuitive Eating-informed counselor, therapist, registered dietitian or nutritionist.