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?

Diet culture is a societal belief system that 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 prioritises thinness over health, moralise food choices, pathologise higher-weight bodies, and generate a pervasive fear of fatness.

Diet culture promotes a narrow “ideal” body type; usually thin, white, heterosexual, cisgendered, and able-bodied; and 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’re “too thin”. This unattainable pursuit keeps society trapped in a cycle of dissatisfaction. It’s like the phrase used by opioid users, “chasing the dragon”; a relentless chase for an elusive high that can never fully be recaptured.

An image of women in normal bodies — Photo credit: We Are Living Cute

Who Does Diet Culture Affect

Diet culture affects everyone and especially those who do not fit the “thin” ideal, including people of colour, individuals from the LGBTQ community, people with disability, people in higher weight bodies, and neurodivergent individuals. Increasingly, men and boys are expected to fit the “masculine” ideal.

Women, girls and AFAB are disproportionally affected, learning from a young age that their worth lies in being small and taking up minimal space. Diet culture keeps women small: when life is spent in semi-starvation, locked in survival mode, attempting to shrink oneself, one’s world shrinks along with them.

An image of an omelette and vegetables that is by default low-carbohydrate

Diet Culture Normalises Food Restriction

Dieting can be defined as any form of food restriction with the goal of losing weight.

Food restriction is so ingrained in our society that we often don’t even realise how normalised it has become.

Common Weight Loss Diets

Calorie counting and tracking
Macronutrient counting and tracking
Avoiding specific macronutrients (e.g., carbohydrates or fat)
Eliminating 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 dictating 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 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
- Detoxes or cleanses
Restricting Eating Times:
- Intermittent fasting
- Time-restricted eating
- Rules like “can’t eat before or after [insert time]”

Weight Loss Diets Masquerading as Health

These exploit health concerns or promote health misinformation to encourage restriction or to sell products:

Targeted Life Stage, Health Conditions, or Concerns:

Perimenopause e.g., the current push for high-protein diets (low-carb in disguise) to prevent muscle mass loss (disguising a fear of weight gain as health)
PCOS
Gut health
Acne

Health Misinformation and Misunderstanding of Human Physiology:

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 elimination without appropriate testing

A plate split in two with on one side a salad and the other a burger and fries

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 the “thin” ideal is held in high regard, framed as perfect and without fault, it shapes the way people who don’t fit this unattainable ideal are judged, valued, and treated. When bodies are placed 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.

When food is moralised, it is divided into “good” and “bad” categories. Eating therefore becomes “good” vs “bad”. Eating “good” foods can make a person seem virtuous, “good”, “clean”, “pure”, or “responsible”, while eating “bad” foods can lead to being seen as “bad”, “unhealthy”, “irresponsible”, “disgusting”, or “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 Prioritises 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 wellbeing. The narrative that weight defines health is not only false but deeply damaging to people’s physical health, mental wellbeing, and social lives.

Individuals of all weights can experience health or illness. The chronic conditions often attributed to higher body weight also affect those in lower-weight bodies.

Diets don’t work. The body’s primary job is to keep us alive. When we don’t consume enough nutrients to meet our needs, the body interprets this as a threat to survival. In response, it converts adipose tissue (fat stores) and living tissue (protein stores) into energy. The breakdown of this metabolically active tissue directly lowers your metabolic rate by up to 40%. Hunger hormones rise, satiety hormones fall, and both physical and psychological symptoms kick in to drive you to eat more. Even after weight is regained, metabolism often remains suppressed for 12 months or longer. As a result, chronic dieting contributes to weight gain.

Body diversity is natural. Asking people who are genetically predisposed to live in higher weight bodies to lose weight is setting them up for a lifetime of perceived “failure”. Your body is not the problem; diet culture is.

Dieting is the strongest predictor of eating disorders. While not everyone who diets develops an eating disorder, every person with an eating disorder has engaged in dieting at some point. Each dieting attempt increases the risk of 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, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, heart failure, sleep apnoea, metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease (MSALD), and all-cause mortality (Swartz et al., 2025).

Women holding signs saying I'm fit, I like my body, I'm beautiful

Rejecting Diet Culture

Rejecting diet culture is an act of rebellion. It challenges societal norms and pushes back against the status quo. It’s considered an act of deviance. It shouldn’t be; but it is radical thinking.

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” and “diet culture is social, relationships are sites of resistance”.

There’s no right or wrong way to reject diet culture; you can do it quietly or loudly, quickly or 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 meaningful health measures such as improved energy levels, improved sleep quality, and feeling less obsessed with food, instead of weight
Move for enjoyment, not punishment
Use neutral language when talking about food, instead of “good” vs “bad”
Diversify your social media by following people with a range of body shapes, sizes, and lived experiences
Avoid negative body talk about yourself 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 misinformation
Reconnect with your body’s natural signals of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction
Create satisfying meals and snacks that support your body’s physiology
Unlearn dieting and disordered eating patterns, and relearn flexible, normal eating habits
Explore options for finding movement that feels enjoyable and sustainable