Have you ever tried a diet only to feel like you’re failing over and over and over again?

There was a time I was on (and then off) every single fad diet out there. If Cindy Crawford or Elle McPherson told me how to eat, I was in. I wanted to look like them.

Inevitably, it would go something like this…

I’d feel really excited about starting my new weight loss regime. I’d gather recipes, buy all the wholesome food, write out a plan and then weigh myself.

Day 1 and I was feeling fantastic, thinking about how I’d be walking down that catwalk, model-esque in just a few weeks. The day would go well, I’d feel elated, maybe do a workout. Yup, I was doing this.

It would be a similar process for the next few days, trying out my new, low calorie recipes, thinking about my future self and how fabulous I would look.

But inevitably the day would come — sometimes a few days later, sometimes a few weeks — but at some point I would start drooling when I thought about chocolate. I would dream about brownies and I would fantasise about eating a croissant. Something — anything — other than the current food I was eating.

I’d be at work and start planning the meal I’d eat on the day I finished my diet — only 24.5 days to go… not that long. Sticky toffee pudding drizzled in chocolate sauce? Or maybe just good old fashioned fish and chips?

That was it, I’d decided — it wouldn’t hurt if today was a cheat day would it?

After all, I’d done a whole week. What could hurt about a little something on the way home?

And that’s pretty much how every binge started. That small decision to jump off the wagon would have me bingeing on all the food I wasn’t allowed, wallowing in my pathetic-ness and asking myself — why can’t I stick to a bloody diet so that I can get the body of Cindy Crawford?

Does any of this sound familiar? It’s not just me right?

Many years later, I finally understand what the deal is with diets. The short answer is that they don’t work, but you probably already know that.

But did you also know that the diet industry knows that diets don’t work, yet it keeps offering them up as the magic solution to life? Perpetuating the idea that you need to lose weight for the sake of your health. That’s diet culture speaking.

Diet culture is absolutely everything that has led you to being obsessed with your weight. It totally warps our sense of health and beauty. Diet culture is in the adverts, your social media, the articles, the eating plans and fitness regimes that give you the idea that weight loss equals happiness and thin equals health.

It’s when your instagram feed only shows you perfect bodies with toned abs and legs with absolutely no cellulite. It’s the promise that you can drop a dress size in 10 days, the dangerous liquid fasts, diet pills and the personal trainers that obsess with your size and shape.

Diet culture is toxic and there are four things it doesn’t want you to know.

Thing #1 — most people can’t achieve the “perfect body”

Flick through pages of any magazine, scroll social media or watch adverts and you are bombarded with pictures of beautifully toned, gorgeous women with endless legs and perfect skin. This beauty ideal is everywhere.

Yet most people can’t achieve this, for two reasons

1. Not everyone is biologically built to be this “perfect size”, and

2. Most of what you see on social media and in magazines is filtered and air brushed. Digitally slimmed legs to create thigh gaps, enhanced bums, chiselled stomachs and flawless skin.

So most of what you’re aiming for is either impossible to achieve, or a digitally manipulated ideal.

Thing #2 — diet culture is selling you the unattainable dream

Has your thought process ever gone something like:

When I lose weight, then I will be happy…

When I lose weight then I will…

…go dating

…get married

…change jobs

…move house

…find the man of my dreams…

When you lose weight you’ll finally be happy? Really? You’re being programmed — through diet culture — to put off living your life whilst you focus on losing the weight before you actually DO anything.

The sad truth is that weight loss isn’t going to solve all your problems and suddenly give you fulfilment. So much better to start living life right now, and focus on enjoying every last damn minute.

Thing #3 — diets don’t work in the long-run

When you really dig into the research on diets your eyes will bleed. Literally.

Diets. Don’t. Work.

You’d think that would be the end of the story, but somehow marketing is subtle, clever and very conniving. Somehow we are made to feel like it’s our fault, that apparently we didn’t have enough willpower.

But here’s the deal — research shows that regardless of type of diet (it can be keto or weight watchers, it actually doesn’t matter), the dieter will lose about 10% of body weight in the first 6 or so months. This is the point where you feel elated, the diet does work and you go out and buy a whole new wardrobe.

Not so fast! If you keep reading, research also shows that when you follow people over a longer period of time (2–5 years) the vast majority of dieters have put the weight back on, and up to ⅔ are heavier than when they started.

You are much better off focusing on health promoting behaviours (i.e. getting enough sleep, doing some movement, eating fruit and veg) than focusing on weight loss, because (I’ll say it again), diets don’t work.

Thing #4 — the diet industry makes a LOT of money by making you feel sh*t

The diet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that makes money by making you feel awful about yourself.

The marketing makes you think that you aren’t good enough the way you are — slimming clubs, diet pills, food products, celebrity diets and metabolism boosters are all part of the cunning manipulation. A total brainwash that makes you cry every time you don’t like what you see on the scales.

The whole industry profits, even though the thing that they are selling (diets) don’t work.

You feel like total crap because you’re aspiring to this thin ideal but not only is it unattainable because you’re probably not one of the 5% of the population that have the genetics to actually have a body like that, but also because you’re looking at a made-up picture.

So, feeling like crap, you start to diet and spend a ton of money on different diet programs, diet food, unnecessary supplements and fitness regimes. It works for a bit (you feel wonderful), but then stops working because you start eating normally (so you feel like crap again).

Wallowing in that crapness, you’ll probably binge a bit because you’ve restricted food for so long, you feel like a total failure again and then promise yourself you’ll start your diet again tomorrow, or next week… and so the cycle goes.

Can you see how the industry benefits from you feeling bad? And makes a ton of money in the process.

The most incredible thing you can do for yourself is realise that your body isn’t the problem. Diet culture is the problem. It’s not you. You aren’t the failure and it’s not your willpower.

I can’t write it better than Megan Crabbe in Body Positive Power who says:

“we are hungry, preoccupied and so obsessed with our bodies that we don’t realise how much extraordinary potential we have”.

She’s spot on there.

Photo by Andres Ayrton from Pexels