As people set optimistic health goals for the new year, one dietician speaks out about how diet-centric resolutions can negatively impact a person’s mental and physical health.

As we kick off 2021, many people aim to take advantage of another year around the sun by setting resolutions. For many individuals, these resolutions are often heavily influenced by U.S. diet culture. From media roundups touting the “best new diets to try” to social media influencers promoting “detox challenges,” it can be easy to fall into a diet culture mindset.

Leah Graves is a registered dietician and the Vice President of Nutrition and Culinary Services at Veritas Collaborative in Durham – a national healthcare system for the treatment of eating disorders.

Graves said we are constantly bombarded with images and messages about our bodies, health and appearance. She said these messages have a big uptick around New Year’s, leading more people to partake in negative eating behaviors.

“Individuals who diet tend to be at higher risk for eating disorders but also diets are not a very effective means of taking care of one’s health,” Graves said. “It tends to lead to a cyclical up and down and rigidity with eating that may actually lead to not the improvement in health that an individual was intending to have, but actually the opposite.”

Having worked in the field of eating disorders and nutrition for the past 36 years, Graves said diet culture often blurs the line between “healthy” eating habits and an eating disorder.

She said every year there are new trends in dieting – and every year these diets prove to be ineffective in the long run.

“When we engage in any type of dieting behavior it doesn’t really matter what the trend of the day is,” Graves said. “Outside of balanced, reasonable eating, our bodies are built to protect us from what is perceived to be famine. As a result, there are all kinds of automated responses to that dieting event that try to prevent us from doing it and try to limit our bodies from losing weight.”

Graves said fad diets like Keto were not created for the general public. She said Keto was actually developed as a therapeutic intervention for seizure disorders in children and, despite it’s popularity, is not well suited for the average person.

Even if consistent dieting doesn’t lead to a clinically diagnosed eating disorder, Graves said it tends to lead to behaviors that dysregulate eating and hurt health over time. She said any kind of dieting or restriction confuses our body and makes it harder to maintain a regular appetite and recognize fullness.

“So, what happens is these things [diets] work very temporarily,” Graves said. “They’ll see results in the very short term, but the five year down the line outcome is generally they weigh more than when they started.”

Graves said this yo-yo dieting, where people constantly change diets or engage in restrictive eating habits, may directly lead to eating disorders and cardiovascular risks. She said individuals should focus on balanced and intuitive eating instead of diet mindsets in 2021.

“I’m a big fan of the non-dieting approaches that look at reason and help people to become connected to themselves so that they are eating in a balanced and rational way that is sustainable for a lifetime,” Graves said.

When it comes to our ideas about what is healthy, Graves said we are overly focused on appearance and labeling foods as “good” and “bad.” Instead of setting new diet resolutions, she said it is more beneficial to work on interacting with your body in a less judgmental way, showing yourself grace and understanding that health does not demand a certain size.

“We as a culture have equated health with shape and health with weight and health with size and they actually are not connected,” Graves said.

Veritas Collaborative is hosting a webinar about the “Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions – and How to Break Them” on Thursday, January 7. Click here for more information. 

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