Dismantling Diet Culture
This post discusses topics (dieting, disordered eating and eating disorders) that may be distressing for some.
Please access support services if required:
Butterfly Foundation National Helpline: 1800 33 4673
Eating Disorders Victoria: 1300 550 236
Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander support: 13 YARN
In an emergency, call: 000
What is Diet Culture and Why It's Time to Question It
Diet culture is a belief system in society. It equates thinness, appearance, and body size with health, morality, and personal worth.
It consists of a set of shifting myths about food and eating. That ranks thinness above health, moralises food choices, and regards higher-weight bodies as unhealthy. It creates a pervasive fear of fatness.
Diet culture promotes a narrow "ideal" body type. Usually thin, white, straight, cisgender, and able-bodied, it pressures individuals to achieve or maintain it at all costs. By its standards, no matter how much effort you put in or how much weight you lose, you are never “thin” enough. Or, paradoxically, you are “too thin”.
This impossible pursuit keeps society stuck in a constant cycle of dissatisfaction. It reflects the phrase used by opioid users, “chasing the dragon.” This means people constantly search for a high that they can never fully recreate.
I love this photo! Photo credit: We Are Living Cute
Who Does Diet Culture Affect
Diet culture affects everyone, especially those who do not fit the “thin” ideal. Including:
People of colour
Individuals from the LGBTQ community
People with disability
Those with higher weight bodies
Neurodivergent individuals
Increasingly, society expects men and boys to fit the “masculine” ideal.
Women, girls, and those assigned female at birth often face unfair challenges. We learn early that our value comes from being small and occupying little space.
Diet culture encourages women to make themselves small. When you learn that starving is a virtue, you end up living in survival mode. And as you focus on shrinking yourself, the space you occupied in your own life gets smaller too.
Diet Culture Normalises Food Restriction
Dieting is any form of food restriction aimed at achieving weight loss.
Food restriction is so common in our society that we often don’t notice how normal it has become.
Common Weight Loss Diets
Calorie counting and tracking
Macronutrient counting and tracking
Avoiding specific macronutrients (e.g., carbohydrates or fat)
Removing whole food groups
Meal replacement programs
Weight Loss Diets Disguised as Wellness
These diets are framed as “health” and “wellness” but still centre on restriction:
Prescriptive meal plans dictate what and when to eat
Moralising foods as “good” vs “bad” or “healthy” vs “unhealthy
“Clean eating” or only eating “whole” or “unprocessed” foods
Restricting Certain Foods:
Quitting sugar
Gluten-free diet (without a coeliac disease diagnosis)
Dairy-free diets
Vegan or vegetarian (not for ethical or environmental reasons)
Restricting Macronutrients:
High protein diets (often low carb in disguise)
Ketogenic diet or carnivore diets
Restricting Eating Times:
Intermittent fasting
Time-restricted eating
Rules like “can’t eat before or after [insert time]”
Detoxes or cleanses
Weight Loss Diets Masquerading as Health
These exploit health concerns or promote false health information to encourage restriction or to sell products.
Targeted Life Stage, Health Conditions, or Concerns:
Perimenopause
PCOS
Gut health
Acne
False Health Information and Not Understanding Human Biology:
Anti-inflammatory
Cortisol
Hormone balancing
Non-Evidence-Based Tests to Justify Restriction or Expensive Supplements:
Gut microbiome mapping
IgG food allergy/intolerance testing
Recommending gluten removal without appropriate testing
Diet Culture Moralises Food & Bodies
Diet culture places the “thin” ideal on a pedestal. Idolising, worshipping, and glorifying it as the ultimate standard of health, worth, and morality.
When society holds the “thin” ideal in high regard, view it as perfect and without fault. It shapes how society judges, values, and treats people who don’t fit this unachievable ideal. When society places bodies in a hierarchy. It implies that only certain bodies are worthy of pleasure, happiness, value, and respect.
Moralising food means attaching value judgements to eating. Rather than seeing food as neutral, for fuel, nourishment, or enjoyment. Diet culture frames eating as a reflection of character, discipline, and morality.
Moralising food splits it into “good” and “bad” categories, turning eating itself into a moral act. People often view choosing so-called "good" foods as virtuous, clean, pure, or responsible. Eating "bad" foods can lead others to judge you or themselves as unhealthy, indulgent, or even "naughty."
Food is then no longer for hunger, satisfaction, enjoyment, or health; it becomes tied to self-worth. This fuels rigid rules and fear, making flexibility around food and eating feel unsafe or “wrong”.
Examples of moralising food:
"good" vs "bad"
"healthy" vs "unhealthy"
"whole" vs "junk"
"natural" vs "processed"
"right" vs "wrong"
"nourishing" vs "indulgent"
"in control" vs "naughty"
Diet Culture Preferences Thinness Over Health
Treating weight as the problem and dieting as the solution removes health from the conversation
Diet culture prioritises thinness at the expense of health and well-being. The idea that weight defines health is not true. However, it is deeply damaging to physical health, mental well-being, and social lives.
Individuals of all weights can experience health or illness. The chronic conditions often attributed to higher body weight also affect those with lower-weight bodies.
Diets don’t work because your body is designed to protect you and keep you alive. When you don’t consume enough nutrients to meet your needs, the body interprets this as a threat to survival.
In response, it converts adipose tissue (fat stores) and lean tissue (protein stores) into energy. The breakdown of this tissue directly lowers your metabolic rate by up to 50%.
Hunger hormones increase, and satiety hormones decrease. Both physical and psychological symptoms kick in, driving you to eat more. Even after people regain weight, they often experience a suppressed metabolic rate for 12 months or longer. As a result, chronic dieting contributes to weight gain.
Body diversity is natural. Telling people who are likely to have higher weight bodies to lose weight can make them feel like they always fail. Your body is not the problem; diet culture is.
Dieting is the strongest predictor of eating disorders. Not everyone who diets gets an eating disorder. However, everyone with an eating disorder has restricted food at some point. Food doesn’t have to be restricted for the purpose of weight loss either.
Each dieting attempt increases the risk of an eating disorder. Eating disorders affect people across the weight spectrum, with only about 3% presenting in underweight bodies.
Weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) is harmful to health. It increases the risk of:
High blood pressure
Heart disease
Type 2 diabetes
Heart failure
Sleep apnoea
Metabolic-associated liver disease (MSALD)
All-cause mortality (Swartz et al., 2025)
Rejecting Diet Culture
Rejecting diet culture is an act of rebellion. It challenges societal norms and pushes back against the status quo. People often treat this kind of critical thinking as an act of deviance; unfortunately, they still consider it radical.
A paper by Jaegar and Jovanovki (2024) identified two key themes among women who have rejected diet culture:
“Diet culture is internalised, dismantling it is personal”
“Diet culture is social, relationships are sites of resistance”
No correct way exists to reject diet culture. You can move at your own pace, whether that's quietly, loudly, quickly, slowly, or not at all.
Ways to Reject Diet Culture
Embrace non-dieting, which may involve seeking support from a non-diet dietitian
Stop discussing diets and dieting
Focus on important health measures such as energy levels, sleep quality, and feeling less obsessed with food.
Move for enjoyment, not punishment
Use neutral language when discussing food, instead of “good” vs “bad”
Diversify your social media by following people with a range of body shapes, sizes, and lived experiences
Avoid talking negatively about your body and others
Learn about weight stigma
Advocate for inclusive spaces
Discourage the promotion of diet culture in your workplace
Working With a Non-Diet Dietitian
A non-diet dietitian can support you to:
Explore your dieting history and your relationship with food and your body
Discover the weight range where your body feels comfortable and healthy
Build a more balanced, positive relationship with food
End the cycle of undereating and overeating
Challenge food rules, nutrition myths, and influencer deception
Reconnect with your body’s natural signals of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction
Create satisfying meals and snacks that support your body’s biology
Unlearn dieting and disordered eating patterns, and relearn flexible, normal eating habits
Explore options for finding movement that feels enjoyable and sustainable
References
Atherton, E. (2021). Moralizing hunger: Cultural fatphobia and the moral language of contemporary diet culture - Charles Sturt University Research Output https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/moralizing-hunger-cultural-fatphobia-and-the-moral-language-of-co
Jaegar, T., & Jovanovski, N. (2024). “People need to be valued because of who they are”: Self-conception and strategies of resistance in women who challenge weight-loss diet culture - Tess Jaeger, Natalie Jovanovski, 2024 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09593535241233839
Swartz, A. Z., Wood, K., Farber-Eger, E., Petty, A., & Silver, H. J. (2025). Weight Trajectory Impacts Risk for 10 Distinct Cardiometabolic Diseases | The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism | Oxford Academic https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgaf348/8160584
