What Do I Think About Diets?

What Do I Think About Diets?

 I was recently asked what I think about diets in general, and believe me, I have thoughts!

Americans are currently spending over 70 billion dollars a year on weight-loss programs, meal services, diet books, magazines and other products. It’s as American as apple pie. And it’s also big business. Each different diet is it’s own potential market opportunity. For example, we have gluten free pasta, keto cookies, plant based meat, slimfast shakes, etc. Whatever you need to help you stick to your diet du-jour is available for purchase. Again, this is a 70 billion dollar industry. I am not including medically therapeutic, practitioner prescribed diet plans in this assessment.

What do all businesses need in order to survive? Customers! Not only do businesses need customers in order to stay in business, they need customer retention. They need their target customers to have long relationships with their businesses. They need repeat customers.

What does this mean for Diet Culture? It means that in order for these extremely lucrative businesses to survive, they literally need you to FAIL in your attempts at weight-loss. If the diet plan they’ve sold you worked sustainably, they would lose you as a customer. Diet Culture needs you to FAIL in order to survive. They need you to FAIL repeatedly in order to insure profitable longevity.

What does this mean for YOU? It means that your years of weight-loss attempts, with failure after failure are NOT YOUR FAULT. It means that your failures have been engineered to happen. Your continued failure is the desired outcome. It’s not your fault. You are not weak, not lazy, you are not any of the negative things Diet Culture has relentlessly told you about yourself.

So much of disordered eating is rooted in trauma. Diet Culture actually causes trauma with these repeated failures and awful self-blaming messaging. Diet Culture perpetuates a learned helplessness that can effect all areas of your life. In my experience, sustainable weight loss depends on addressing the root cause emotional issues that underly most triggers. In my opinion, any diet that does not address the emotional issues is doomed to fail.

What is the solution? An “unlearning” needs to happen. We need to unlearn core negative beliefs about ourselves that have been perpetuated by Diet Culture. We need to really internalize the understanding that this has been done to us, we are not defective, not faulty, and there is nothing inherently wrong with us, keeping us from being successful in ways that are seemingly effortless for others. We need to unlearn the false belief that we’re personally flawed so that we can begin treating ourselves with self-compassion, kindness and to truly begin to heal.

Identifying and addressing triggers by learning to pause and think about what’s really happening in your heart and mind is essential to gaining more control around problematic eating behaviors. Noticing patterns around these triggers is the first step in breaking them. It’s ironic that as an Emotional Eating Coach, the most impactful thing I’ve seen clients do for their success, is to denounce Diet Culture and to really understand how it’s influenced their journey.

Are you struggling on the diet rollercoaster? Have you spent years of your life chained to Diet Culture? There is support available and a peaceful relationship with food is a real possibility. Reach out for a free discovery call to learn more about sustainable weight-loss and increased peace and happiness around food!