If you are just starting, or thinking of starting your journey to food freedom, you're in the right place!
Diet mentality is a way of thinking deeply influenced by diet culture.
This might be believing that being skinny means you will be healthier, or that you should use exercise to burn off the food you’ve ate today.
Rejecting this mentality is the first principle of Intuitive Eating which has been covered in a past blog post.
Today I’m going to talk about why diet mentality can be harmful to you and your relationship with food, how it can show up in your life and how you can ditch this way of thinking for good!
Why is diet mentality harmful?
1. Brings feelings of guilt and shame
Thinking diet mentality thoughts and having set rules or beliefs can make you feel more guilty or shameful about eating.
For example. If you believe chocolate is ‘bad’ and you shouldn’t eat it, you avoid it at all costs. But then you start to want it more and more, and eventually you give in and eat the chocolate.
Because you had been ‘good’ for so long the feeling of being a failure and guilt will be intense.
Imagine you ate the chocolate when you first wanted it, with the knowing that balance is key and eating chocolate is totally normal. You would have ate an amount that satisfied your want for chocolate and moved on with life with less or no guilt.
2. Increases food worry & stress
If you have a diet mentality that tells you certain foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ you likely have a lot of stress when it comes to picking what to eat. And you probably worry a lot about what you're going to eat when going to a restaurant or a party.
The reality is no foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Yes some foods might nourish our physical body more but this doesn’t make them ‘good’ and it doesn’t make the others ‘bad’.
Turning this black and white thinking into one that is more inclusive will help ease the worry and stress you feel around food.
3. Increases ‘all or nothing’ type thinking
Having a lot of food rules or harmful beliefs can increase your ‘all or nothing’ way of thinking.
It’s the ‘I’ll start again on Monday’ phrase for me.
For example. If you believe you’re only allowed 1200 calories a day, once you go over this by 300 do you just leave it there? The reality is you might think, ‘fck it I’ve ate too much now I might as well keep going’.
If you hadn’t been so strict with yourself and your belief that you can only eat 1200 calories, you might not have been so annoyed that you went over it.
And then you probably wouldn’t have went into ‘fck it’ mode and binged on anything in sight.
4. Limits and restricts food choice
Some diet mentality ways of thinking will limit the types of food you have to pick from when you’re hungry.
Having the belief that carbohydrates are bad will limit an entire food group from the list of foods you have to pick from.
The belief that carbohydrates are ‘bad’ for you is a common diet culture belief that isn’t true.
Identifying and breaking down your diet mentality thoughts will set you up perfectly on your journey to food freedom.
How can diet mentality show up in your life?
You might not be able to recognise your own diet mentality without looking closely for it.
If you do try to identify it yourself and you just can’t pin it down, you might need need some outside help to guide you on what they might be. 1:1 support from a food freedom nutritionist (like me!) can help you do that!
Book your free discovery call to talk about how we can work together.
In the meantime, here are some common ways diet mentality might show up for you. Hopefully this gets you recognising your own thoughts and beliefs.
· “I can’t eat after 8pm at night.”
· “Foods are either good or bad.”
· “Carbs make you fat, I shouldn’t eat them.”
· “I am only allowed 1300 calories.”
· “I need to exercise to burn off calories.”
How can you ditch the diet mentality?
1. Recognise and know the damage of dieting
Becoming educated on the influence diet culture has within society is important when trying to ditch your diet mentality.
Knowing the fact that diet’s don’t work, and knowing why they don’t work will give your brain the reasoning to fight against your diet mentality thoughts.
2. Become aware of your diet mentality thoughts
Take the time to discover your own diet mentality and the thoughts you have regularly.
Each time you discover one, write it down. And then write down all the reasons why it’s wrong. Having facts to use against your diet mentality will make it so much easier to shoot it down when it tries to interrupt your eating.
Just keep in mind that it can be hard to identify your diet mentality thoughts at first. So don’t get disheartened if you can’t see them all right away.
Talking to a non-diet nutritionist or dietician about your beliefs around food will help you identify your diet mentality a lot faster than you would on your own. So if you feel stuck, don’t hesitate to reach out for some short term 1:1 support!
3. Ditch the dieting tools
Yes, that notebook you record your weight in needs to go. And so do the scales. I know this is a big step but when do you ever get anything good from weight yourself?
And I just know you have MyFitnessPal on your phone. It needs to go!
You need to take away the obsession around knowing your weight and the amount of calories you eat every single day. It’s just feeding your diet mentality.
4. Cut yourself some slack
Ditching the diet mentality isn’t easy and it won’t happen overnight.
These are thoughts you have believed to be true and trusted for years. So it’s no surprise that years of thought patterns won’t be changed in a week.
It takes time to relearn and it takes time for your body to trust your brain again.
Finally, diet mentality can be sneaky and can disguise itself as 'wellness' so don't beat yourself up if you miss some.
The most important thing is taking that first step with good intention to really change your life and break away from diet culture and the hold it has on your relationship with food.
You've got this!
With love,
Yazmin.
Support with Vibe Nutrition Therapy
If you want to start working towards food freedom and need guidance on where to start breaking down your diet mentality thoughts and beliefs support with us would be perfect!
We would provide compassionate and empathetic support in a relaxed environment, to help you feel empowered to take action when it comes to your relationship with food.
Find out more about support with a non-diet nutritionist at Vibe , or book your free 15 minute discovery call to find out how we can guide you to ditching the diet mentality and reaching food freedom!