Dieting: Don’t Underestimate the ED Risk
The New Year is coming. We can feel it already. Hot on its heels is the same, old New-You/Weight-Loss advertising.
Of course, they won’t call it a diet, but, as the saying goes: same sh*t, different sandwich. It is a diet. Any intentional effort to lose weight is a diet.
I know the fear-mongering about health can be very scary. But it’s not actually about health. It’s a multi-billion dollar profit machine, capitalizing on our deepest fears around life, death, and quality of life.
If we’re truly concerned about our health, though, we should be concerned about the very real risks of dieting. Dieting and body dissatisfaction are major risk factors for eating disorders. And eating disorders have the 2nd highest mortality of any mental disorder (surpassed only by opioid use disorder in the past decade or so). Here are just a few examples:
Over 1/2 of teenage girls and nearly 1/3 of teenage boys use unhealthy behaviors to control their weight (i.e. - skipping meals, dieting, smoking, purging) (Seruya, 2020)
Internalization of the “thin ideal” is a causal risk factor for disordered eating (Thompson & Stice, 2001).
In a large study of 14– and 15-year-olds, dieting was the most important predictor of a developing eating disorder. Those who dieted moderately were 5x more likely to develop an eating disorder, and those who practiced extreme restriction were 18x more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who did not diet. (Golden, et al. 2016)
Unfortunately dieting is so normalized in our culture - we’re inundated and surrounded by it. This can allow eating disorders to begin and to grow in plain sight, disguised as “normal” or even “healthy” dieting! This is super dangerous!
All dieting - meaning, any intentional efforts to lose weight - is at least a yellow flag, if not a red flag, for disordered eating.
So when you encounter the New Year’s advertising onslaught, block, mute, and unfollow liberally. You don’t need that messaging manipulating your very real and valid human longings and fears.
Need support navigating all of this? Book a free 15-minute phone call, and we can get started right away.
Citations
CW: Stigmatizing language about people in larger bodies
Seruya, A. (2020, October 3). The impact of weight stigma on our mental health. Center For Discovery. Retrieved March 13, 2023, from https://centerfordiscovery.com/blog/the-impact-of-weight-stigma-on-our-mental-health/
Thompson, J. K. & Stice, E. (2001). Thin-Ideal Internalization: Mounting Evidence for a New Risk Factor for Body-Image Disturbance and Eating Pathology. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(5), 181–183. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00144
Golden, N. H., Schneider, M., & Wood, C. (2016). Preventing Obesity and Eating Disorders in Adolescents. Pediatrics, 138(3). doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1649