Is Your Diet Causing Harm?
For people who break free from diet culture, it can feel like taking in a huge breath of air after being underwater.
Regular food restriction was a way of life for my client, Laura, but through our work together, she’s allowing herself to eat foods that she enjoys and her binge eating is decreasing. My background in nutrition helps us discover foods together that taste delicious and nourish her.
The truth is diets don’t work. Even worse, they can cause lasting mental and physical harm.
Researcher Traci Mann at UCLA led a study that analyzed 31 long term studies about weight loss, following participants for at least 2 years and as long as 5 years. For anyone who’s a chronic dieter or who restricts food, these findings may not surprise you:
Dieters typically lose 5-10% of their body weight in the first 6 months. However, one-third to two-thirds of dieters regain all of the weight they lost over a four- to five-year period.
Several studies showed that dieting is a strong predictor of weight gain. In one study tracking 19,000 healthy older men over a four-year period, men who had lost weight in the year before the study began, had the highest rates of weight gain.
Another long term study shows that at least one-third of dieters gain back more weight than they lost.
Mann and her fellow researchers state that the number of dieters who regain weight may be significantly higher than reported since many participants who gain weight drop out of these studies, and because most studies have participants self-report their weight by phone or mail rather than having their weight measured on a scale by someone else.
They also state that the stress of weight cycling (losing and regaining weight, also called yo-yo dieting) is correlated with poorer health outcomes, including increased rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and immune function.
These are common mental health outcomes of dieting:
Lowers self-esteem
Increases body dissatisfaction
Here are common physical health outcomes of dieting
Causes weight gain
Slows metabolism
Causes the body to burn muscle for fuel
Triggers hormonal changes that create a preoccupation with food and weight
Dries skin
Causes hair loss
Decreases sex drive
Despite this information, the US weight loss industry is worth $72 billion. Our society blames willpower for causing obesity and weight gain, but the science shows that diets fail us, not the reverse. Our bodies are built to survive. When we starve ourselves (aka diet), we think about food, sometimes to obsession, our metabolism slows, and we burn muscle for fuel.
Nowadays, diets are billed as wellness plans, cleanses, and healthy lifestyles, but let’s face it, they’re all selling weight loss and thinness above overall health. Fatphobia still reigns, but we’re chipping away at it as more people join The Body Positive, Intuitive Eating, and Health at Every Size movements.
Researcher, activist, and author Lindo Bacon, the founder of the Health at Every Size movement, explains in this report how weight stigma, or discrimination based on weight, is a stronger predictor of poor health markers than what you eat. In other words, even if you’re eating a so-called healthy diet, the stress from believing your body is too big overrides the positive effects of the diet.
Breaking free from diet culture feels scary because it’s what we know. Intuitive Eating - the weight-neutral approach I use with clients - asks us to reject the diet mentality and rebuild trust with our body’s internal cues.
