Women have been told early and often that all of our problems will disappear if we just look a certain way (insert lose weight, become skinny, get smaller, shrink, become more palatable, be more consumable). This is told to us over and over and for some young girls by the time they are teenagers they are primed to go on a diet. YIKES!

I remember the first diet I went on. It was in 8th grade, I was 13 and I called it the apple diet. I would eat 3 apples each day and that was all — one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner. Obviously, this was unsustainable as my mom didn’t buy 21 apples each week for me. But I clearly remember skipping lunch and dinner and opting for apples instead. As an adult, looking back upon this, it breaks my heart to see someone so young and innocent already tormenting herself with diet culture.

When I read the statistics I realize my behavior, which I’d hope was uncommon, is the norm. Today the average age a girl begins dieting is 8. Yes, 8. This is disturbing. And reports show that almost 41% of first thru third grader girls want to be thinner. And that 51% of 9 and 10-year old girls feel better about themselves while dieting.

AHHHHHH this is horrifying.

I share my story to remind us all how deeply ingrained these messages around our body and what it should look like are. It’s been a part of our inner dialogue for so long it just seems normal.

Investigating some of these messages can be liberating and transformative. I’ve seen huge breakthroughs with my clients when these messages become unrooted. Often times it is these messages about are bodies that are keeping us stuck and struggling. 

And of course, dieting culture does nothing to address this conditioning, instead it reinforces it.

So today I want to share 4 myths dieting culture perpetuates that keep us stuck and struggling. Of course there are many more, but I thought I’d start here.  

One of the most basic messages put out by dieting culture:

 

1) Diets help you lose fat/weight.

Unfortunately, that is not what the research shows.

We know that 95 % of folks that diet regain all the weight and then some within 3 years. Although some folks may get some scale results initially, it doesn’t necessarily mean fat loss. Most diets promote water and muscle mass loss therefore decreasing the number on the scale, but not actually dropping your body fat percentage or changing the shape of your body. Even worse is the fact that less muscle means slower metabolism.

 

2) Diets make you healthier and feel better.

Even though this is conventional wisdom, we all know restricting calories, cutting out certain foods, and eating less and less makes us hangry, miserable, and depleted. But a few less known facts are the chronic conditions dieting puts you at risk for developing, such as a high blood pressure, insulin resistance, heart disease, and inflammation. And due to the restrictive and unnatural way diets have you relate to food, diets put you at a higher risk for developing body dysmorphia, obsessive thinking, anorexia, and bulimia.

One of the most subversive ways dieting hurts us is the way it changes our relationship to food. Diets disempower us from listening to our bodies and instead override our bodies natural wisdom, signals, and cues. Instead of focusing on eating slow, enjoying your food, and being present to how you feel — diet culture teaches us to obey certain portion sizes, avoid certain foods, and judge ourselves based on how “good’ we did. In the most fundamental sense, this is so far from what a healthy relationship with food looks like.

 

3) More Exercise Is Better

Have you ever seen one of those facebook memes that shows how many burpees you need to do to work off an ice cream sundae?

Or have you ever heard a group fitness instructor tell you “gotta work off that pizza you’re eating tonight”?

Diet culture perpetuates the belief that more exercise is better. It is what is necessary to burn more calories. It perpetuates an idea that food should be earned and that if you do enough exercise that you can have “whatever you want”.

All of this is just insanity. Exercise and calories don’t work in direct relationship to each other. In reality and biology, other factors play a role in your overall metabolism. Factors like sleep, hormones, and stress all play important roles in metabolism and if ignored will inhibit fat loss and proper metabolism.

 

4) More Willpower + Discipline = Success.

Diet culture tells you indirectly that if you can’t lose weight it is your fault. It conveys this message through using willpower and discipline as the key skill one must embody to be lean and healthy or lose weight. Diet culture says: the more you can restrict and deprive yourself, the more weight you will lose.

This in fact is a flawed premise. It is based on the assumption that humans have unlimited willpower and discipline and that it is a choice to use it in a situation or not. This however is not the case. We know from behavioral research that willpower and discipline are limited resources. They become depleted over the course of the day and week by all the decisions one must make. Decisions as mundane as what to eat for breakfast and as complicated as your finances for the year. All of these decisions deplete your willpower and discipline resource. That is why at the end of a long stressful day or busy week it is much easier to grab pizza and wine for dinner instead of the salmon salad.

If you want to dive deeper into ego depletion which is what our willpower and discipline is tied to check out this post.

 

What To Do Instead

:: Don’t Diet

:: Tune into self talk & conditioned beliefs you  have internalized

:: Build habits through practice

:: Discover movement you enjoy & be consistent with it

:: Create support, accountability, and community

 

I’ll be discussing more on this topic in coming weeks, but I’d love to hear what dieting culture messages you find harmful?

Look forward to hearing from you!