Cancel Diet Culture – #RiotsNotDiets

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." – Author unknown (although often attributed to Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner

My story: Jenna Elizabeth, 25 years old, she/her, UK:

"Right now, I think my body image is the best it has ever been. Growing up, I was heavier than others in my family and I wasn't comfortable in my skin. During middle school I was teased and bullied and I struggled to feel good about myself. All of this shaped how I viewed my own body for many years. Recently, I've grown much more accepting of myself, but it was after a bit of a journey.

During my college years I lost weight in a pretty healthy way. I changed my eating and activity habits, and I received a lot of positive feedback about the changes in my body. It felt good to receive those positive comments, but at some point, I lost too much weight and became less healthy. It was confusing at first because I had always thought of thinness as healthy. My doctors had always scorned me at visits and told me that I should lose weight for the sake of my health (although I never had any problematic symptoms that were indicative of my weight being a health risk). Like so many people I had linked weight with health – I assumed they were directly related. I've had to move past that.

I've never been underweight according to a medical chart (for body mass index). But I stopped getting my period and when I went to my doctor (and later an endocrinologist, who specializes in hormone functioning) it was clear that my heart rate had dropped too low and my hormones were off. The prescription for recovery was weight gain, less exercise, and rest.

The jumpstart of my recovery was deleting the app My Fitness Pal and not keeping track of what I was eating. I think when I started college and had total control over when I ate, exercised, and what groceries I bought it was comforting to monitor my eating and activity. I had used the app for so many years that I didn't trust myself without it. I needed to learn to trust myself again and not let some app dictate what I did and didn't eat.

Getting rid of social media accounts also helped me to become healthier. When I was in college, I followed a lot of fitness accounts and food trends on Instagram. But when you are on social media you are seeing thousands more pictures a day about appearance, fitness, and eating ideals than you would otherwise. And most of what you are seeing isn't even real! It's been edited or made to look a certain way. I am happier now that I'm not on social media.

If I could offer my younger self some advice, it would be to be sure she understood that health doesn't have a certain look. In pursuing health, I created some unhealthy habits! I was a "normal" weight but still developed some pretty serious health problems. Numbers – your weight, height, what you eat, etc. – can't define your health."

Like Jenna, most of us have grown up the victims of cultural messages indicating that it is important to control our appetites and be slender. We should monitor what we eat and how active we are. We should avoid certain foods all together. We should "cleanse" our bodies of "bad" foods. All of these messages suggest that we can't trust ourselves. Our bodies will betray us! These messages are incredibly misleading and harmful. Collectively, these maladaptive messages about food and our bodies are referred to as diet culture.

All of these messages are pervasive and inaccurate. They suggest that we should just keep trying – doing the same thing over and over again with the hope of different results – to achieve the body we want. That body is slender in all the right places, muscular in all the right places, and voluptuous in all the right places. (The "right places" are different for individuals who identify as male versus female.)

Here's what psychological and medical research actually indicates:

1) We don't have total control over our health or the appearance of our bodies. With enough time, will, and money, you can exercise, alter your eating habits, get cosmetic surgery, consult with doctors and therapists, and alter your appearance and health. But the alterations may not be permanent and may require a great deal of effort. Other factors – from your genes to your access to resources – play a substantial role in your psychological health, as well as your physical health and physical appearance.

2)  Every body is somewhat unique. You may have your dad's nose and your mom's vulnerability to experience an upset stomach when you're stressed, but you are your own unique person. You can try to look like a celebrity, influencer, or even a popular girl at school, but you won't ever be those people and you don't need to be. In fact, even if you ate the exact same things as that girl and did the exact same physical activity regimen that she did, your body would look different!

3) "Fixing" or changing our health or appearance-related behaviors is not obligatory. We all tend to invest some time and energy into both how we look and feel (i.e., our health). However, diet culture suggests that we really should do a variety of things to "improve" ourselves. What if we are absolutely fine just the way we are? A lot of people make a lot of money by stoking our insecurities and encouraging us to invest in these improvements, but no product, pill, or plan will produce happiness or perfection.

During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020), the weight loss market in the U.S. declined, but this brief loss was restored in 2021 with the weight loss market estimated to be worth 72.6 billion dollars. The global weight loss market was valued at 192.7 billion dollars in 2021, with projections indicating this could grow to 326 billion dollars by 2028. In other words, dieting is big business; the "health" recommendations pertaining to our appearance, bodies, and weight are not typically offered by altruistic health professionals seeking to help us feel good about ourselves and live long, healthy lives. They're offered by unregulated companies looking to make money; they contribute to the diet culture we reside in in most industrialized countries.

Diet culture tells us we must control our bodies instead of caring for them. It leaves us feeling dissatisfied with who we are, but offers a range of "solutions" for this dissatisfaction. Often these solutions are completely maladaptive and rarely are they based on scientific evidence. As you'll see in this chapter and the chapters that follow, many of the recommendations we see in diet culture messages are no different from diagnostic criteria for eating disorders. What all diet culture messages tend to have in common is a focus on the importance of individual responsibility in how we look and feel. But the real problem is with the culture, not the individual! Many of us have been gaslit into believing we just need to try harder. However, our bodies are not never- ending projects.

The problem with food fads and diets

Chances are you've been on a diet before or followed some sort of food fad, whether it be a juice cleanse, intermittent fasting, or a commitment to cut sugar out of your life. The majority of people dabble with this sort of behavior, and many are willing to try plans, potions, or programs again and again in the hopes of slimming or reshaping their bodies. There's nothing to be embarrassed about if this describes you. Why wouldn't you want to look and feel great?

That's what marketing for food fads and diets indicate will happen if you just do what they recommend. The problem is that these are empty promises.

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Diets and food fads are likely to encourage extreme habits, unhealthy behaviors, and they are unlikely to offer a long-term approach to taking care of your health. Below I discuss eight specific reasons to avoid them.

1) They don't work – and they usually backfire

Let's say you decide to try a "fat melting, low-carb diet." You cut out most bread, pasta, and other grain-based foods from your diet. You'll miss those foods a lot! Assuming you replace those foods with nutritious meats and fats, you may initially feel good and you may feel like you have more energy and maybe you'll even lose weight. For most people (including the thousands of people who have been studied), the feeling good/weight loss part of this experience lasts a few months, maybe three months if you're lucky. And then life gets in the way and "willpower" falls short. You'll be out to dinner with friends and you won't be able to resist the rolls. Your dad will make your favorite pasta dinner and you'll eat three servings. You'll have a bad day at school or work and you'll eat a cookie for lunch. Gradually, the carbs will sneak back into your diet (as they should; carbs are actually good for your body and your brain!), and gradually you're likely to resort to your old eating habits and you'll gain whatever weight you lost. In studies that follow people across time, nearly everyone who followed a plan that eliminated entire groups of food (carbohydrates, fats), couldn't stick with the plan long-term and gained back the weight they lost after two years, and most gained extra weight, too.

One reason why food fads and diets tend to fail is because they typically involve restriction of foods that we like to eat! It's just hard to avoid foods that may be among your favorites. Another reasons for the predictable failure of most of these plans is because at the most basic level, our bodies don't respond to restriction in the way we typically want them to. Our bodies are hard-wired to respond to restriction as if we are starving and need to be saved.

Usually, this means that restriction is met with an increase in food cravings – especially foods that provide us with fast and sustaining energy, such as carbohydrates and fats.

2)    The physical consequences can be dangerous

If our bodies are not getting the nutrients they need to sustain us, the physical consequences can be devastating and ultimately even deadly. As registered dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (you'll hear from them a lot more in the next chapter) have said, "a dieting body is a starving body."

When we do not eat enough, our bodies seem to respond by putting our limited resources into the most essential functions of living. Then, other physical functions are deprived and a variety of physical symptoms may ensue. People who don't eat enough may be sensitive to cold, feel tired all the time, they may experience bone thinning and osteoporosis, and their reproductive health may suffer, resulting in menstrual irregularities and infertility (among those born female). Our bodies are also unable to protect us and heal when we are undernourished. In other words, even wounds may heal slowly and we may be at heightened risk of contracting infections. Perhaps most serious can be the cardiac risks that may result, leading to dangerously low blood pressure and even arrhythmias (irregular heartbeat).

Of course, some diets and food fads involve restricting certain types of foods, but not necessarily the amount of food. There is still danger in these approaches because our bodies need a variety of nutrients to function optimally. There are health risks associated with cutting out any category of food – even carbohydrates or fats!

Myths and Misinformation: When your doctor tells you that you need to lose weight, you should go on a diet

Most doctors become doctors because they want to help people achieve good health and recover from illness or injury. They make recommendations that they believe will be helpful.

However, most doctors receive very little (if any) training about nutrition, diet, body image, and weight. They can document where you fall on a height-weight chart, but they may not know much about how to educate and support their patients concerning eating and body image. In other words, although a doctor is a good person to turn to with questions about health and well- being, sometimes doctors may not be the best source of advice when it comes to your weight.

Medical professionals also live diet culture, meaning that they are also vulnerable to all the misinformation that the rest of us see every single day stressing the importance of weight loss, having a certain size body, and the unrealistic possibility of changing our bodies in any long- term, healthy way.

If you're ever told by a doctor that you need to lose weight, you should get a second opinion from another medical professional. It may be most useful to talk with an expert who has been trained specifically to help people eat well and maintain a positive body image. A registered dietitian, nutritionist, or even a psychologist with this specialty could be a good person to consult.

Most important, if you believe—because a doctor told you so, or your own research leads you to believe this—that you need to lose weight, a food fad or any diet is not the answer. It's possible you'd feel better if you changed your regular habits to eat more nutritious foods or to be more physically active, but you should only make changes that you plan to keep for the long term. As I stress in this chapter and throughout this book, if you try a short-term diet or food fad of any kind, it's likely to detract from your health. It's also likely to be a miserable experience.

3) You'll be miserable

When people commit to a diet or food fad, they often claim that they want to feel better. People usually expect to feel better both physically and psychologically. Research suggests that people often do feel good at the start. They tend to feel like they're committing to do something for themselves that's important. Janet Polivy, a researcher who has studied weight loss efforts for decades, has written that people feel so good on the day they start a diet that they'll report unrealistic experiences like feeling taller or thinking they're more likely to win the lottery.

The problem? These good feelings don't last very long, because none of us like to be deprived. If we've decided to avoid sugar, for example, we'll end up feeling irritable that we aren't able to eat sugar. Although this change to your diet was intended to make you feel better, within a few days you may actually feel worse.

One of the first studies to examine this phenomenon took place in the 1940s. Ancel Keys was the scientist who conducted the study that has become known as the "starvation study." Thirty-six healthy men participated in this study and agreed to have the amount they ate each day drastically reduced to about half of what they used to eat. The result? The men lost weight. That was expected. What wasn't expected was how this experiment affected participants' mental health. They became obsessed with food and some even began to dream about food and collect recipes. They had a hard time focusing on regular activities and they became more socially withdrawn, depressed, and very, very cranky. Recent studies confirm these early findings: food fads and diets aren't good for your mental health.

4) You'll start to engage in ironic processing

Have you ever tried not to think about something and found that you couldn't get it out of your mind? Maybe you were irritated with a friend and you tried to clear your mind of this irritation to focus on a test at school, but it kept creeping back into your mind. Ironic processing is the scientific term used for when you're trying to clear your mind of a thought but it actually seems to have the opposite effect and you often find yourself thinking about it more. (It's "ironic" because it's the opposite of what you'd expect, and the "processing" part refers to your thoughts or "cognitive processes.") How is this related to what you eat? Well, a lot of food fads and diets are all about trying to not eat foods that you like and probably want to eat. The more you try to not think about these foods, the more you may actually want them!

Don't believe me? You can try a little experiment on your own. Try not to think about anything chocolate for the next two minutes. You can watch a clock to keep track of time and just sit still, relax, and try not to think about chocolate—cake, cookies, ice cream—put it all out of your mind. How did that turn out?

In a recent study, Traci Mann, a well-known expert on dieting, asked one group of dieters and another group of nondieters to try to avoid eating from a box of chocolate that they were given. After 10 days, the dieters had eaten more of their box of chocolate. It seems that the act of trying to avoid "indulgent" food had backfired. This finding is similar to many studies that have been done to understand the thoughts and behaviors of people who are trying to reduce what they eat or change the types of foods that they eat. It's ironic, but the end result is nearly always the opposite of the desired goal.

Expert Advice: Traci Mann, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota and author of Secrets from the Eating Lab, U.S.A.

"So many things I've heard about dieting my entire life are just plain wrong. I was told that losing weight was the hard part and keeping it off was the easy part, and that if you couldn't keep the weight off it was because you were weak and had no willpower. In fact, losing weight is the easy part and keeping weight off is the hard part. Most people are unsuccessful at this in the long term, but it isn't because they are weak. It's because dieting – calorie deprivation – leads to all kinds of changes in your body and in your thinking that make it very difficult to keep dieting successfully. The problem isn't the dieter. The problem is dieting."

5) Diets and food fads encourage body hate

The diet and supplement industry attracts so many customers because it manages to convince us that there is something wrong with our bodies. The industry tells us there is something wrong with us—we're too skinny, too heavy, or not muscular enough—but they can help us fix it. Fads focus us on what we shouldn't do (and shouldn't eat) in order to be more attractive. This is an unhealthy way to think about ourselves.

A different way to think about our bodies is in a loving, caring way, which means thinking about the things we want to do to take care of ourselves, not the activities and foods we want to avoid. Psychologists have done research on goal-setting and have found that goals such as this, focusing on what we do want to do, are usually easier to achieve than "avoidance goals" (as they're sometimes called). This is a much healthier way to think about our bodies. Focusing on our health and nourishing our bodies is an important component of self-care. Plus, body hate is a waste of energy and is generally unhelpful. 

Myths and Misbeliefs: Intermittent fasting is an effective and healthy approach to weight loss

Intermittent fasting (also called time-restricted eating) has received attention in recent years as an approach to weight loss. It typically involves people eating as they regularly do for five days a week and then eating relatively little for a couple of days a week. Some people eat within a select window of time each day—for example, between 10am and 5pm. The general idea isn't always to limit the amount of food eaten, but to limit what is eaten to certain periods of time.

Research by nutritionists suggests that intermittent fasting can help people lose weight, but not any better than just changing the foods people eat (for example, snacking on fruit instead of less nutritious snacks) or exercising more often. A recent study found that intermittent fasting led to hardly any weight loss – and the weight that was lost was muscle. One of the problems with intermittent fasting is that it leaves people hungry. It's a way of eating that can be difficult for people to stick with long term. In other words, even if it helps people lose weight, they lose muscle, not fat, and they eventually gain weight back over time.

Intermittent fasting is also problematic because it shares many similar qualities with eating disorders and there is concern that intermittent fasting can lead to the development of an eating disorder. Ignoring your hunger cues for days or parts of days can eventually lead you to have a difficult time identifying when you are and aren't hungry as your body adapts to periods of "starvation." Adaptive eating habits require that you are able to sense hunger and satiety (i.e., fullness), so I can't recommend intermittent fasting. Much more information about the importance of paying attention to your body's cues can be found in Chapter 5 of this book, where I discuss intuitive eating.

6) Weight cycling is a likely result

Any attempt to follow a food fad or diet is likely to contribute to weight cycling. In other words, you may lose some weight and then you'll gain it back (and you may gain additional weight as well) and a cycle of losing and gaining may repeat – indefinitely – across time.

Weight cycling occurs for both biological and psychological reasons that I discuss in other sections in this chapter, but what I want to emphasize here are the possible physical consequences of weight cycling.

Research suggests that weight cycling decreases your metabolism and lowers your body's need for energy making it likely that you'll maintain a higher weight across time. It also increases the risk of disordered eating; weight gain and loss and gain can lead people to resort to more desperate, maladaptive eating habits. Weight cycling also affects basic physical processes and may contribute to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance.

7) Food fads and diets take up a lot of mental space

Something I often think about is the amount of time and energy I wasted in my youth worrying about what I was eating and trying to avoid eating, well, most foods. I wonder what the world would be like if people used less of their valuable mental space finding and trying to adhere to fads and diets. It's still more likely for women to be engaged in these food fads and diets and the energy they spend on these concerns can seriously impair their ability to invest in other areas of their lives. Food fads and diets are really one more element of oppression in patriarchal societies.

I know that may sound a bit extreme, but think about it. Even if you're an excellent multi-tasker, you probably can't cook a meal while reading a book while having a conversation with someone else. You can only think about and do a couple of things at a time. If you're focusing a lot on what you can or can't eat—eating being something you likely do throughout the day—this is going to distract from other things that you could (and possibly should) be doing.

Sometimes scientists refer to this as "attentional focus" or "bandwidth." We only have so much mental space, attentional focus, or bandwidth but in resisting fads and diets we can preserve some of this. When you're tempted by the latest fad or diet, keep in mind that deciding to follow a fad or diet means deciding not to do other things, or not do other things as well as you could have. Is this a choice you want to make?

8) They're not a good use of your money

Because medical institutions and organizations – and products that are supposed to promote health and wellness – are created to help people, many people assume that they are not interested in making a profit. But the diet industry and the Red Cross have next to nothing in common. There are many institutions, organizations, professionals, and products that may help you to improve your health, but nearly everything associated with dieting will not.

Products and plans can be described as "prescriptions for health" and opportunities to feel better or even look better, but this does not mean that they are any of these things. Marketing strategies often make diets and food fads incredibly appealing; for a reasonable price our whole life will improve! The diet and supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. People who come up with and sell diet plans don't necessarily care about your health, and they don't necessarily care if you lose weight or gain weight or get healthier – they care about making money. If your body or weight doesn't change in the way you'd like it to, you may need their "product" again that much sooner. This may sound cynical, but the research across decades makes it clear that the only way you can change your weight is to change your habits permanently. Keep this in mind the next time you're tempted to follow any sort of diet plan or food fad: There are a lot of people who would be very happy to have you buy their products, plans, and pay for their book or other services. This doesn't mean they have your best interest in mind.

Of course, this isn't to say that your health is a bad investment. Your health is absolutely worth spending money on. If you love strawberries or peaches and can afford to buy them (even when they are not in season), you should. If you enjoy taking dance or karate classes, set money aside so that you can take them. If you would use and can find the funds for a Peloton bike, go for it. If a new pillow or mattress would help you to sleep better, invest in one. Your physical and mental health are valuable investments; just make investments that are evidence-based and not a scam.

What should I do instead?

You may have picked this book up because you want to know how to feel good about your body and, related, how to eat. I aim to offer evidence- based advice throughout this book, but I can only offer general advice that may or may not always work for you or any one specific person. Obviously, I'm pretty certain that following food fads and diets is a bad idea. At this point you may be wondering what you should do. How should you think about what to eat if you aren't supposed to follow a popular plan or prescription of some sort?

Focus on your health – psychological and physical

As you become an adult, you will become more responsible for your own health. You also probably have more freedom in terms of what you eat and how you spend your time. It is natural to want to take advantage of that freedom and you may find yourself eating fast food or drinking soda or doing other things your family may not have allowed previously. No one has perfectly healthy habits all the time and no one should worry if they stop at McDonald's occasionally. You may find, however, that you do not feel your best if you stop at McDonald's every day. You may also find that you feel better when you are active and get plenty of sleep. If you've fallen away from routines that make you feel good and are good for your body and mind, it is OK to try to change your habits.

It's critically important that you focus on your health and avoid fads when it comes to food. If you want to change your habits—concerning food, exercise, or anything, really!—be sure you are making changes that are backed by science.

Make small, sustainable changes

The biggest mistake people tend to make when they decide to change a health habit is that they aim too high and don't focus on sustainable goals. In other words, people aren't always very good at being honest with themselves about their current habits and about the likelihood of maintaining their desired goals. You're better off making small changes to your habits that you can actually stick with. For example, if you drink juice or soda regularly, you could switch to water or milk most days. It might be hard at first, but once you are in the habit you may realize that soda doesn't even taste that good to you anymore. Because soda doesn't add any nutrients to your diet, this is a positive health swap. However, this also doesn't mean that you can never drink soda!

Behavioral science research supports this approach. Making small, sustainable changes to your health habits is far better than trying to cut out all sugar or carbs or count every single calorie. Most people would improve their health if they just ate one more piece of fruit or one more vegetable per day. Many people would feel better if they exercised for even 15 minutes (more) per day. Making these sorts of small changes to our lives are not necessarily fast ways to feel better or become healthier. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, or even months to notice any changes as a result of changing small habits. Be patient! Remember, your primary goal is to improve your health and how you feel. Being happy, healthy, and confident is important for the rest of your life, and these factors are all part of maintaining a positive body image.

The Bottom Line

Diet culture suggests that drastic changes to your habits – removing an entire food group from what you eat, consuming certain types of supplements like protein powder, or keeping track of every morsel that passes your lips – come with rewards. Like many of us, Isabella fell for diet culture because the rewards associated with these sorts of drastic changes are believed to be real and they're powerful. In contrast, having an undesirable body that falls outside of cultural ideals is believed to be associated with significant costs. In some research, girls have indicated that they are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of cancer, nuclear war, or losing their parents. Think about that for a moment. Is the size or shape of your body really that important?

Summing Up #RiotsNotDiets:

•       Diet culture is a collection of ideas and values prizing thinness, erroneously equating health with thinness, and suggesting that our body sizes and shapes are changeable – if we just try hard enough.

•       Dieting has been shown to be ineffective and is often more likely to lead to weight gain than loss over time.

•       There are many negative consequences associated with following food fads and diets, from the distraction they create in our lives to the money they cost us.

•       It is possible to change your eating and activity behaviors and doing so may improve your health, but may not necessarily change your body size and shape significantly.

Find Out More: 

•     To learn more about diet culture, check out Virginia Sole-Smith's new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture (2023). It's geared towards parents, but her research is fun to read and we can all learn a lot from her many years of writing about diet culture.

•       Virgie Tovar's, You Have the Right to Remain Fat (2018; The Feminist Press) is a personal and cultural exploration of diet culture – and why life is better when you leave dieting behind.

•       For more resources about dieting and diet culture, see the companion website for this book.

Excerpted from Adultish: The Body Image Book for Life by Charlotte Markey. Published by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.