In our previous blog post titled, “Negative Side Effects of Dieting” we discussed the physical side effects that dieting can cause. Now it’s time to dive into the psychological and emotional damage that dieting can cause. First of all, every time you go on a diet, you become more vulnerable to the effects of stress. Dieting alone causes you to be deprived of the nutrition you need for your nervous system to work properly. There is even current research being done right now that is examining how the stress of dieting may actually very well affect the neurochemical circuits that control appetite. Secondly, there are horrible feelings of deprivation that come up every time you diet and it’s hard to imagine just how powerful and damaging these feelings of deprivation can be.
To understand deprivation we can look to the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who talks about our hierarchy of needs. His basic and most simple statement is that we are driven by our unmet needs…that we are actually motivated by what we don’t have. This image is from Jenna and Lauren, the podcast hosts of ‘How to Love Your Body’. Their Instagram account is @thebodylovesociety. This image is a good representation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how it is affected by dieting aka deprivation. Basically, the lowest level of the pyramid is made up of the most basic human needs, while the more complex needs are located at the top. Maslow’s theory of motivation states that certain lower needs, especially physiological needs (food, water, air, sleep, etc.) need to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed. Maslow believed that all other needs become secondary until these needs are met. For example, if our body is telling us we need to drink water and we are thirsty, then little else matters until we have something to quench our thirst.
Let me explain this further. If you put a bunch of toys in front of a child and tell that child that he/she can play with anyone of those toys except the one in the corner, let’s say this is a big rock…which toy do you think that child is going to go after? Of course, that child will most likely choose to play with the rock because it is the one toy that is off-limits. This image is from a dietitian named Taylor. Her Instagram account is @foodandfearless We love using her wonderful visuals for our blogs to help really bring to light what is going on. This image is a pretty good representation of what goes on in your brain when you go on a diet. When we can’t have what we want we end up feeling so vulnerable to the loss of control. Basically what we are told to restrict will become what we crave. And when we finally do go after that which we are being deprived of, along with that loss of control come feelings of failure, lower self-esteem, and even social anxiety. Let’s say you go to a wedding or a party with a lot of delicious food but you are afraid to eat because you might feel out of control and people might see you eat a specific way…Would you be able to enjoy that event? Most likely not, because all you would be thinking about the entire time would be “I can’t let myself eat out of control”, and if you do end up eating you will most likely experience an overwhelming sense of shame or guilt- “There’s something wrong with me, I have no self-control”. Does this sound fun? Are you starting to see how these things would erode the confidence and trust you have in yourself? In fact, they might even make you feel like you have a fundamental character deficit. So many people come into my office and tell me that there’s something wrong with them because they can’t stay on their diet. We regularly see the many negative psychological and emotional impacts that dieting has on our clients. Ultimately, we see more and more and more from research that diets are linked to serious life-threatening Eating Disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. When we go on a diet, we let external food rules mandate what, when, and how much we are “allowed” to eat. This is what makes chronic dieters so vulnerable to developing disordered eating patterns.
Since we’ve been talking about psychology and emotional damage let’s now take a look at the psychological reasons why diets fail. This to me is the nuts and bolts to why diets don’t work at the psychological level. The first reason has to do with willpower. I work with so many successful people of all walks of life who are happy with their lives in so many ways, yet they come into my office and they tell me they are a failure… how everything is working for them except that they can’t stay on a diet. Why is this? Why can they be so successful in all of these other areas of life and still feel like they are failing because of a stupid diet? Well in other areas of life they have a purpose that has meaning and is consistent with their own deep values. So of course they’re disciplined to do the work it takes for those things such as their job or to stay connected to the family members. However, when they try to apply the same sense of discipline they call “willpower” to their diet, they fail. That’s because willpower is something very different; it’s an attempt to counter the natural desires that you have and replace them with prescriptive rules. However, our diet-culture filled society has been telling us for decades that “not having enough willpower” is one of the reasons why we keep failing all of those diets. This image below, also from @thebodylovesociety, really deconstructs the misuse of the term ‘willpower’. To quote from their post, “not listening to your body isn’t ‘willpower’, it’s just suffering for no reason”. Basically, if you want to stop suffering, you have to start listening to your personal signals. This will reinforce your natural instincts rather than fight them.
Practicing intuitive eating is not a matter of “willpower”. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. I mentioned deprivation earlier and how it is a key psychological reason why diets don’t work. I promised you there could be something that would make you feel so much better and let you know that there’s nothing wrong with you. This is a strong and deep psychological factor that I believe it’s the main reason why diets don’t work. This has to do with autonomy. When you go on a diet the need to assert your autonomy overrides and is stronger than you need to lose weight. I know that sounds shocking but this factor has to do with the internal violations and the emotional boundary issues that ensue. What does this mean? What are the boundaries? Robert Frost once said, “good fences make good neighbors”. We know that fences set up the boundaries to keep people in and out of our yards. Perhaps as an adult, you have a sense of freedom and autonomy and you set up your own psychological boundaries about what to think, what to believe in, and what to eat. So when the external rules of dieting cross over the boundary, they cross into the private place that protects your mental bandwidth and efforts to rid all diet talk.
I’d like to share a little story of something that happened in one of my virtual consultations. One of my clients started to tell me about how happy she was feeling that she was beginning to leave some food on her plate and noticing when she was full. I thought I’d play with her a little bit and ask her how she thought she might have felt if I was the one who had told her to leave some food on her plate… If you could have seen her body language you would have seen the anger that was rising in her. Her response to me was a resounding no. She put her hand up and said “I wouldn’t have done that” and that’s what happens when you are told what to do.
Other psychological effects of dieting include:
Depression
Lack of self-worth
Social Isolation
Mood swings
Apathy
Fatigue
Irritability
Poor concentration
Body Image Issues (Body Dysmorphic Disorder)
If your “healthy diet” is making you feel any of the side effects mentioned above, ask yourself if it is helping you or hurting you? No matter who you are, YOU can work towards food freedom and enjoy the present! If you are ready to get started, Click here to to fill out a short application for our dietitian team to review.
