Warning: This article mentions eating disorders, disordered eating, and restrictive eating practices.
Dietitian Maddi Parsons shares why leaving diets behind in 2022 could be the best thing you’ll ever do for your relationship with food and your body and shares some tips on what to focus on instead.
For generations, we’ve felt pressured by our harsh and unmerciful diet culture to go on a diet or at the very least lose weight. It’s estimated that the average person will go on 126 different diets throughout their lifetime, all with little to no success.
Diet culture tells us that thinness is the pinnacle of beauty and worthiness and perpetuates the message that you are a ‘bad’ person if you look anything other than this thin ideal. This cultural belief places appearance before physical, psychological, and overall wellbeing.
However, regardless of what type of body you are living in, dictating your health and self-worth on your weight, shape, and/or size is doing more harm than good, says Maddi.
“This is because diets aren’t designed to be effective in the long term. If they were, how else would the diet industry be worth a whopping $254 billion? Research suggests that around two-thirds of people who diet regain more weight than was lost within the first five years.”
Repeated attempts at dieting (read: yo-yo dieting) can lead to ongoing loss and regain of weight, commonly referred to as weight cycling.
While weight cycling from diets carries a lot of negative mental and physical health effects including a heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease, inflammation and osteoporosis, dieting is also the single biggest risk factor for developing an eating disorder.
So, if you’re ready to ditch the diets for good this year and build a healthy relationship around food and your body, here are three things you can do to get started.
1. Say goodbye to the black-and-white view on food
Rules, labels, and restrictions around food can make for intense hunger, cravings, guilt, and shame around food all the more likely (not exactly the ingredients we want when shaking up a food freedom cocktail).
Tearing down the rules around food and working towards seeing all foods as morally equal is one of the best things you can do to ensure your relationship with food will thrive.
2. Build healthy habits that aren’t related to body shape or weight
The scales suck, plain and simple. Instead, try focusing on improving other areas of your health aside from your weight, shape, or size.
This could look like engaging in movement that makes you feel good, improving your sleep routine, or improving your mental health through journalling or meditation. Not only will these habits improve your overall well-being but it also shifts the focus on what health actually means.
3. Practice body neutrality
Body neutrality means accepting and forming an appreciation for all that your body allows you to do, irrespective of how it looks. It’s based on the notion that loving every single part of your body isn’t always possible.
A good way to get started is to practice body-neutral affirmations such as ‘my happiness and self-worth is not dependent on my appearance’.
Maddi Parsons is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Nutritionist and works with people to achieve a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. You can find more about her online here.