How Strong is Your Diet Mentality?

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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]

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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.

What I Do When I'm Not Digging the Skin I'm In

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Even though I’ve been on my body acceptance journey for many years now, I still have days when I’m not digging the skin I’m in.

In the past, a challenging body day would easily turn into weeks, if not months. Like a dark cloud, it would loom over me contaminating my every action and interaction.

I’d hide from the world. Push away my partner. And go into fix-it mode—that is, create a plan for changing my body.

Inevitably, my plans always backfired. They weren’t sustainable or pleasurable. They led to rollercoaster weight fluctuations and a disordered relationship with food and exercise. And they only made me loathe my body more.

My Most Powerful Tool
These days, I have an extensive tool kit for navigating a challenging body day with greater ease, from doubling down on weight-neutral self-care to observing my thoughts without getting hooked by them.

One of my most powerful tools is remembering that I came into this world loving my body and that I was taught—without my consent—to see it as flawed (and fixable!) by our pervasive diet culture.

As writer and activist Lindy West says:

“Fight to remember that you are living inside of a cruel, toxic system, and when you hate yourself for gaining five pounds it’s because a billion-dollar industry conditioned you to feel that way for profit.”

Reclaiming My Power
When negative feelings toward my body creep in, I remind myself that I can reclaim my power by understanding that my body is neutral and the only reason I feel bad about it is because I have been programmed to do so from a very young age.

I no longer blame myself for failing to shrink myself. Instead, I blame the systems of oppression that want me to believe my body is a problem to solve.

I now give the middle finger to our insidious diet culture that relentlessly tries to convince me that if I just played my cards right, I’d finally have a flat stomach, cellulite-free thighs and a small, perky butt—and thus finally be worthy, acceptable, happy and healthy.

I no longer stand for this oppressive BS.

I see clearly now that it’s our weight-stigmatizing culture that needs to change, not my body—or yours.

*I highly recommend checking out Lindy West's show, Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir. It's about a struggling young journalist, played by the fabulous Aidy Bryant, who is determined to change her life without changing her body.