Rejecting Diet Mentality and Shifting to Self Care

Written by Michelle Shelton

November 8, 2023

Our society is steeped in diet culture - the belief that we need to restrict and fight against our bodies, following external rules to achieve an external definition of health, usually tied to body weight and appearance. While this is all touted to be in the name of health, this war against our bodies is actually creating deeply unhealthy patterns of weight cycling and self esteem tied to a number on a scale instead of a person’s inherent worth. The path to true health requires breaking this pattern by recognizing and rejecting diet culture and all the ways it creeps into our own thoughts and belief systems. 

Shifting to a Mindset of Care and Compassion

The diet mentality is based in certain beliefs:

-        My worth is tied to my weight.

-        My happiness is dependent on my body size.

-        When I reach my ideal weight, I will finally be able to love myself.

-        The way that I eat and the foods that I choose are a reflection of my moral character.

You might read these beliefs on paper and know how absurd they sound. You most likely (hopefully) would never apply these standards to other people. Yet they creep in unwittingly and show up in sometimes subtle ways. Every time you step on a scale and feel down because the number is higher than you wanted, every tinge of guilt because you ate that piece of dessert, every diet you begin with anticipation of how happy you will be when you reach your ideal weight. These are all signs of diet culture creeping in. And while, on paper you disagree with them, they still show up in our behaviors. I call this believing in your mind, but not yet believing in your heart. 

So how do we build congruence between what we know in our minds and what we believe and act out in our hearts? 

The answer is to consciously notice the diet mentality when it creeps in, reject it as a belief you do not want to practice, and cultivate a new belief. As you practice the trait of rejecting diet mentality, you will cultivate a state of body wholeness and attunement. 

What, then, are the beliefs we must cultivate in the place of diet culture? We cultivate beliefs of body worthiness of care and compassion. Beliefs of trust, that our bodies are wise and can be trusted to guide us to what it needs. Beliefs that our food choices are not a reflection of our moral character. 

Examples of these beliefs include:

-        My worth is immeasurable. It is not something I earn. It just is.

-        I deserve to be happy at any size.

-        I deserve to be loved and cared for at any size.

-        As I nourish my body from a place of attunement and care, my body will find its natural and healthy size.

-        My food choices are not a reflection of my moral character. They are simply choices that I can make and change based on how I feel and what my body needs.

Rejecting Diet Myths

In addition to these beliefs, our diet culture perpetuates certain myths that further perpetuate diet mentality:

FEAR: If I stop dieting, I won’t stop eating.

REALITY: Dieting is often the trigger for overeating. The intense drive to eat is a normal response to starvation, and dieting is nothing more than an intentional process of starvation. The solution is to restore attunement and a mindset of responsive caring for your body.

FEAR: I don’t know how to eat when I’m not dieting or following an eating plan.

REALITY: When you let go of food plans and do the work to cultivate your natural, innate wisdom to nourish your body, your inner signals will guide your eating. It’s normal for this to feel uncomfortable and uncertain at first, but through the process of intuitive eating, you can cultivate and reestablish this intuition and it will become your guide.

FEAR: I will be out of control.

REALITY: Control is a tool to manage and follow external rules. Intuitive eating is the process of reestablishing your relationship with internal signals. External rules and expectations have no place in your self-care routine. Only you know what you need. This journey is about letting go of control and replacing it with attunement and care.

FEAR: This may be true for other people, but I don’t think it is true for me.

REALITY: It is very common to lose touch with your natural inner wisdom with eating and food. In fact, most of us do. So many external factors in our environment and culture teach us to neglect this inner wisdom and rely on external cues. But every one of us comes into this world with an innate wisdom for what our bodies need. It will take work and change to rediscover it, but it is there inside of you.

(Source: Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition. Tribole & Resch, 2020.)

Exercise: Notice. Shift. Rewire.

Rejecting the diet mentality requires work and effort to cultivate a new mindset grounded in self-compassion and trust. You can do this by using a technique called Notice, Shift, Rewire.

First, reflect on the new beliefs you want to cultivate. Using the statements above is a good place to start. 

Next, Notice. Begin to watch for thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that demonstrate how diet culture has influenced and is affecting you. Notice without judgment, simply taking note when it arises. Use the exercise on the next page to reflect on ways the diet mentality of our culture has affected you and your life.

Then Shift. Bring awareness, focus, and intention to the new beliefs you want to cultivate. It may help to say them out loud, read them on a page, or write them in a journal.

Finally, Rewire. Give yourself a redo. Restate the thought, replay the event in your mind with how you would act or what you would do without the diet mentality, but from a place of self-care, self-trust, and love. 

Rejecting the Diet Mentality is fundamentally about turning from external rules and expectations of how to eat and shifting to attunement to internal signals grounded in trust for self and inner wisdom. Instead of asking, “What/when/how ‘should’ I eat”, we ask, “What does my body need and how can I respond to and care for it in this need?” It’s shifting from the belief that the body’s natural state is gluttony that needs to be managed and controlled to believing the body is wise and worthy of trust and care. It is shifting from a belief that your worth is tied to external measures, such as weight, and instead choosing to believe that your worth just is.