New Year, New Me?
Our culture is obsessed with the idea of a transformation story. We are focused on the weight loss journey that paints a picture of a happy and successful life once someone changes their appearance. This toxic concept is alluring to many. Have you ever fallen into the common trap of “transformation obsession?”. The “New Year, New Me” mantra feeds into this obsession. Diet culture gives people the false hope that their lives will drastically improve when they begin these new programs, sustaining the belief that they are more worthy when their body looks a certain way. These improvements look like false promises of new love, happiness, success, and overall joy after a certain amount of weight loss. This brilliant marketing technique traps you into believing all your problems will be solved once you start a diet. Let’s peek into how fad diets can damage your body image and your relationship with food long-term and some of the reasons people ACTUALLY feel better when they begin a new diet.
The Real Reasons We See Mental Health SOMETIMES Improve When Starting A New Diet & The Dangers That Come with It:
1) Community Aspect of Dieting: Diets (like weight watchers, keto, and other health and fitness trends) utilize our social drive. This method introduces you to a new social circle on your “fitness journey”. Studies show that when you join a new community, you often feel more satisfaction and happiness due to your increase in socialization. The common goal of weight loss helps you to connect quickly and easily. Unfortunately, this can cause superficial friendships, and there are several other downsides to making connections in this context. People are often anxious to continue these relationships if they regain weight or want to separate themselves from dieting. It can also create a toxic culture of comparison, illuminating the contrast of what they eat, or their achieved weight loss. This often promotes competition rather than a vulnerable and deep connection.
2) Routine Change: Diets often provide routine and help people to feel more connected and mindful in their everyday lives. Things like going to a gym at certain times, meal prep, and making short-term and long-term goals often help you feel more present and move you in the direction you want. However, making goals with weight loss as the focus can reinforce the ideas that your worth is tied to what you eat, weigh, and how much you exercise. Another issue is that individuals start to tie how much happier they are with dieting when it is really achieving their goals and maintaining their established routine, contributing to their increased happiness.
3) Making Meals at Home: Fad diets stress that their way is the only way. If this were true, any diet would work for any individual. Simply making meals at home is a great way to ensure that your body gets what it needs. Additionally, research shows that when people make meals at home, they feel accomplished and experience less financial strain. There is NO SHAME in eating out, and it is important to iterate that going out to eat is a normal part of life. Unfortunately, people frequently feel guilt when they eat out, because most diets demonize eating outside the home.
4) Body Changes/ Weight Loss with Dieting: People often idealize weight loss and associate it with their worth due to our weight-obsessed society. If someone has struggled with self-esteem or body image issues for most of their life, they experience fulfillment from these physical changes. One of the problems with this is the compliments or reassurance received after losing weight. We internalize that “I did not look good before I lost weight,” which strengthens weight stigma and obsessions with “thinness”. This then causes the individual to feel defeated when they regain weight (because 95 % of diets result in weight regain within the 1st year).
What is damaging about the diet mindset long-term? One of the biggest issues we see in therapy is that people overly romanticize their lives changing for the better if they change their bodies. So, if this does happen, then they learn that they were not as: worthy, attractive, or disciplined before their body changed. They then fear returning to that body size and associate their worth with their body. They also learn that people congratulate them or give a large amount of reassurance or praise when they lose weight or have a body change, increasing hypervigilance with what the person eats. If a diet doesn’t work for the person, they tell the individual that they “didn’t do it right” and that they need to start a new diet or workout routine to make themselves feel more confident. Thus, increasing the likelihood of feeling undisciplined or like a failure. They will also solidify their belief that their worth and worthiness are tied to body changes. And it can reinforce avoidance because individuals may avoid things they want to do until they “have a better body”.
This year, instead of a new year’s resolution focused on how your body looks, try making goals related to how you talk about your body. This will help give you long-term results of loving your body and helping your body image, no matter what you weigh, how you eat, or how you exercise.
Deanna Smith, LCSW
This blog is not meant as therapeutic advice, rather to provide education. If you or a loved one is struggling with disordered eating, or body image issues know that there are many educated qualified mental health therapists and dieticians who are well-versed in these complicated issues. Please seek therapeutic & nutritional support if disordered eating or body image concerns are impacting your life.
