How diets descend into disorder
Plus: The truth about diets
Hi writers!
It’s the beginning of a new year which means one inescapable truth: Diets are dominating.
It’s impossible to silence the near-constant flood of tips to trim fat or new eating regimens that promise a bikini-ready body in the miraculous span of a few days.
New Year’s resolutions often involve some kind of deprivation or lifestyle change, intended to make us “healthier.” But when our bodies are deprived, we might crave the substance even more, setting ourselves up for failure.
So where’s the line between making well-intentioned changes while avoiding slipping into diet culture’s culty abyss?
This week, I explore:
the all-too-common descent from diet to disorder
a revelatory fact sheet from WithAll that delves into the mysteries of diet culture
a prompt to help you conceptualize an anti-resolution resolution
Yours in recovery,
Allie 💗
Food for Thought 📖
Dieting: A slippery slope to disordered eating
“The dirty little secret about the diet industry is that many diets will fail.”
The quote above comes from a Good Housekeeping article that discusses the similarities between diet culture and disordered eating. Where most people think there is a clear delineation between the two and are confident in their ability to spot the difference, the truth is that most diet behaviors, mantras, and flashy slogans can serve as the blueprint for disordered eating and, sometimes, can set the dieter up for a full-blown eating disorder.
Often we think that if we follow a certain diet, we’re doing something right. We’re part of a community, we feel supported, and we are motivated by visual proof of others who’ve achieved desired results thanks to infomercials and social media. But the people who experience “desired results” from diet regimens aren’t always showing their audience the whole story.
Maybe they took the diet guidelines to an extreme, beyond what is recommended. Maybe they gained the weight back shortly after posting their before-and-after images online. We don’t know the history and intention behind each person’s weight-loss journey. We don’t know their “healthy” weight (or the weight range in which their body is meant to fall based on height, genetics, activity level, and other metabolic factors). We don’t know whether they’ve struggled with disordered eating in the past. And therefore, we can’t be certain whether the same diet will work for our specific body type.
But first, let’s start with the basics.
ED Digest 📰
From WithAll: The truth about diets
Unlearning diet culture is something I practice every day. If I didn’t, I’d be swallowed by the messages that tell me I’ll never be good enough.
WithAll has released a helpful fact sheet that explains the perils of dieting and gives parents the tools they need to build healthy relationships with food for their kids and themselves.
Pause & Prompt 📝
My anti-resolution for 2025…
