The diet industry was worth 72 billion dollars in 2019 and unfortunately, with this money comes the ability to exhibit a large influence over how consumers comprehend health and wellness. I’ve previously discussed what diet culture is, why it’s harmful, and the reasons why dancers need to dismantle it. But these days, it’s not so easy to spot the dieting mentality.
What is the dieting mentality?
The dieting mentality encompasses thought patterns that drive mealtime decisions from goals set forth by diet culture. These goals often prioritize weight loss, thin ideals, and body composition shifts. Health or performance might also be involved, but even these relate back to the use of food to manipulate body weight and ultimately, trigger or exacerbate disordered eating. Mealtime decisions that are driven by the dieting mentality do not account for accessibility (time, financial), food preferences, or innate feelings of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction.
There are four specific eating personalities explained in the book, Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Identifying which eating personality feels most relatable can help you uncover whether or not your mealtime decisions are a product of the dieting mentality.
The Wellness Industry: Is “anti-diet” just dieting in disguise?
Much of the language that embodies wellness glorifies food restrictions and normalizes disordered eating (ie. “clean” eating). A shift in consumer demand is also changing the way in which diet culture markets itself. This is especially true with known anti-diet paradigms like intuitive eating— misinformed and self-proclaimed “experts” use now-buzzy labels like “anti-diet,” “intuitive eating,” “food freedom,” “holistic nutrition,” and “wellness” to guise restrictive plans and exhaustive exercise routines. I previously discussed why clean eating lifestyles exemplify some of the most deceptive ways in which diet culture grabs consumers in addition to 5 red flags of anti-diet fraud. For the purpose of this article, we’ll uncover three (dieting) tools that are commonly marketed in the wellness space: Noom, WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers), and My Fitness Pal.
Noom, WW, My Fitness Pal – What are they hiding?
Each of these dieting tools–Noom, WW, MyFitness Pal– begins by assessing your height, weight, and activity level to compute a daily calorie budget. The problem with any quick calculation, however, is its inability to account for one’s true individual energy expenditure (or the number of calories the body is burning in one day). Additionally, the “calories in equal calories out” paradigm has been disproven and does not account for the metabolic adaptations that happen with restrictive eating.
Any program that utilizes a daily calorie budget will be largely centered on the idea of food volumetrics. Volumetrics is a way of eating that prioritizes physical fullness over true satisfaction. An example of volumetric-based eating is deeming a serving of fresh grapes as “better” than a serving of raisins (dehydrated grapes). The fresh grapes are more voluminous and therefore, will promote feelings of physical fullness sooner.
The problem with volumetrics
In terms of volumetrics, adding fat (a higher-calorie macronutrient) isn’t the best idea because it spends most of your calorie budget. This is why most (if not all) volumetric-based diets translate to lower-fat diets. For example, you’re encouraged to swap oil or butter with cooking spray.
Here’s the problem: fat promotes staying power (the degree to which your meal or snack keeps you feeling full). Omitting fat from your meals and snacks leaves you with a hormonal deficit that induces knawing and chronic hunger. Click here to learn more about the importance of fat both on your plate and on your body. Also, we cannot outsmart our bodies. While bulking up on lower-calorie foods might promote fullness in the short term, it ignores what I consider the fourth macronutrient on our balanced plate: satisfaction. Bottom line: your appetite will skyrocket as soon as your body discovers the calorie deficit.
Noom. It’s a diet.
While MyFitness Pal ends at the calculated calorie budget, Noom and WW take it a bit further. Noom uses a spotlight system to categorize food:
- Green Light foods are preferred options that you can eat in (almost) unlimited quantities. These are classically low-calorie foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Yellow Light foods are somewhat higher in calories but are still deemed on the healthier side often because of their protein content (salmon is an example).
- Red Light foods are encouraged to be eaten mindfully. They’re classically high-calorie and high-fat foods despite their nutritional breakdown. Nut butter, cooking oils, fries, and pizza are examples.
This spotlight system is no different from WW, which utilizes a point system to categorize food in a similar manner. Instead of a daily calorie budget, you’re given a daily point budget. Overall, Noom and WW are not as drastically destructive as some other highly restrictive cleanses and detoxes. But regardless of which “lifestyle” you’re following, categorizing food as “good” versus “bad” induces a ton of guilt and shame when those so-called “green light” or “low point” options are not accessible. You’re also setting the stage for a cycle that is fueled by deprivation. You start out feeling super in control around food but eventually feel super out of control around food. Here’s a great article that dives deeper into the problems of Noom and how as a multi-billion-dollar company, it’s coercing the language of eating disorder recovery.
Where you get your nutrition advice matters
Programs like Noom and WW offer real-time support, which sounds super enticing. But where you get your nutrition, health, and “wellness” advice matters. Noom, for example, relies on special “Noom Coaches” (not licensed to practice) to help consumers in their decision-making.
But the challenging part is that even credentialed sources can spew misinformation. I commonly see medical doctors advising restrictive dieting as a means to achieve “health” through weight loss. When it comes to nutrition advice, seek support from a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who is well-versed (certification is a plus!) in intuitive eating. Be careful! The titles “nutritionist,” “nutrition expert,” and “nutrition coach” are unregulated. This means anyone (even those lacking appropriate accreditation and licensing) can use them. Click here to learn more about how a licensed practitioner can support your goals.
If you’re weight tracking, beware
Noom, WW, and MyFitness Pal all encourage weight tracking, a method that involves daily or weekly weighing with the intention to lose weight. The desire to lose weight is very normal in our weight-driven culture (read more about weight loss here). But we know that weight does not reflect health. Being in a larger body does not mean someone is “unhealthy” and being in a smaller body does not mean someone is “healthy.” Prioritizing weight loss and weight monitoring can increase your risk of obsessive tendencies and overall body dissatisfaction. I’ve previously discussed how dancers can identify a healthy (or “ideal”) weight (spoiler: it’s not what you think!). Bottom line: the goal is to focus on your set point weight range, which can be maintained without dieting, compulsive exercise routines, or weight monitoring.
The bottom line: it’s becoming an increasingly tough challenge for consumers to decipher between dieting and “anti”-diet. My hope is that with practice, you’ll be able to utilize these three popular culprits as examples of how diet culture is coercing the “anti”-diet (and wellness) rhetoric.
