Falling (and Staying) Off the Bandwagon: What it Took to Stop Dieting for Good
*Peeks at the Internet*
Is it safe to come out yet?
The first quarter of the year is over, and it finally feels like it’s safe to be on social media again. The big bad wolf in question?
Dieters.
It’s not their fault, I know. Still, every January, I loathe to see the droves of people who fall into the diet industrial complex machine, only to get churned over and spit out a few months later… perhaps a few pounds lighter, but more likely in about the same physical condition as before with the addition of new toxic “mental tricks” about food and how to eat less of it.
In case you can’t tell, yes, of course, I was one of those people.
What can I say? We can’t all have a sexy, playful cringe era; some of us get religious trauma and eating disorders.
From the ages of 16–36 to varying degrees, I was either actively dieting, engaging in disordered eating behaviors, or trying to recover from said behaviors. Two entire decades of my life, during which I really, really didn’t like my body.
Like many 80’s babies, I was raised on skim milk, Snackwells, and Diet Coke. I was generally a thin child who filled out as I matured, and from the moment I became aware of my “extra” flesh, I got the message that it was bad.
My most concrete memory of my senior year in high school, other than being dumped by my boyfriend at the time, is that I was on the Atkins Diet. Avoiding carbs never got me to my goal weight, but I was close—so close.
If only I hadn’t eaten the cake at my graduation party…
That’s when I found Zumba. The classes were so much fun, and I felt amazing! After a few months of taking three to four classes a week, I got certified to teach and began to lead classes. From the outside, it looked very much like I was high on life. I was thin, dedicated, and successful.
I was afraid to tell anyone at the time that I was restricting my calories so much that when I started combining the restriction with regular cardio, I also started binge eating.
I’d like to pause here for anyone who reads that and thinks, Oof, yeah, I eat too much sometimes; it’s so uncomfortable.
That is not what I’m describing. For me, binging meant regularly sitting on my couch, alone (always alone) and thinking, holy shit, I’m so full, I need to stop eating, and then 10 minutes later, getting up and not being able to stop myself from stuffing even more in.
It was entirely outside of my control, and I hated myself for it.
Cue the crushing shame, and then repeat the cycle at regular intervals.
That is what binge eating felt like.
If there is a silver lining, it’s that I didn’t like vomiting, so thankfully, it never occurred to me that bulimia could be a “solution.” But once the binges became regular, the panic about the extra calories set in. I ended up taking laxatives because it was the most subtle way I could think of to get the food out of my body.
I also started getting so lightheaded while teaching Zumba that I needed to sit down to avoid passing out.
It didn’t even occur to me that I wasn’t eating enough.
Because here’s the thing: I’ve learned that this kind of behavior is common, and because of that, it has become normalized. Until I got outside of the diet culture bubble, none of what I’ve described raised any kind of alarm in me or in the people in my life.
I wanted to be healthy… and everyone around me at the time agreed that meant being thin. Including me.
I wanted to be okay with my body, but the weight crept back on. While I had resolved not to restrict as much, I still had plenty of shame gremlins in my head telling me what a fat, lazy failure I was.
Years later, at a Weight Watchers meeting, some co-workers lamented about their calorie targets dropping as they lost weight. Less body mass meant fewer calories were necessary, so the target would continue to drop until they hit their goal weight.
I remembered reading a diet tip that said you should never eat less than 1200 calories a day, or you could screw up your metabolism. Since I’m a short and relatively petite person, that had been my calorie target all along.
I was already at the basement floor-level calorie target and not anywhere near my goal weight. Did that mean eating 1200 calories a day for the rest of my life? That sounded miserable.
It all stopped making sense, and I realized I could spend my entire life in constant tension with my body, and I just didn’t have it in me to care anymore.
Breaking Down Diet Culture
I wish this were the end of the narrative, where I kissed dieting goodbye for good and never looked back, but alas, it wasn’t done with me yet.
I gained some weight, yes, but I also gained perspective. I found an eating disorder recovery group that helped shift my mindset tremendously, and over the course of years, I got out of my restrictive mindset around food and calories. Breaking down years of diet culture bullshit is hard.
Here are a few things I thought were “normal” because they are normalized:
Strict portion control: buying special dishes or single-serve packages because of a “lack of self-control.”
Referring to foods as “good” or “bad” based on nutritional values.
Thinking of food as a reward or a cheat, especially “bad” foods.
Trying to hack your cravings with things like baked kale chips or banana ice cream.
The key theme here is that complying with diet culture narratives is designed to give you a sense of virtue. “Falling off the bandwagon” becomes riddled with shame because it feels like a moral failure.
Despite not wanting to engage with that narrative, I’ve continued to struggle in my relationship with food and dieting. I went through a couple of cycles over the years, albeit with less intensity than I had in my binge eating and Zumba days, but I still struggled with how my body looked.
The final straw was sometime during the COVID lockdown. I hadn’t dieted in years, had been maintaining my weight, and was eating without restriction. I really thought I was fully “recovered” from diet culture.
But damnit if my pants didn’t get a little tighter while navigating the collective stress we all faced during that period, and damned if I didn’t find myself signing up for some goddamn challenge to win money and hack myself into losing 15 pounds.
When I signed up for it, I thought I was being pretty moderate and reasonable, but in the final 48 hours of the challenge, I got my scale out, stared down at it disappointingly, and thought “maybe if I don’t eat for the next 48 hours I can still lose the last few pounds.”
Poof. That was it.
I looked up, snapped out of it, and realized what a slippery slope dieting is and how little it took for me to be willing to deny my body of nutrients and energy in service of some superficial goal or ideal.
No more dieting. I am done.
I still love my Diet Coke, though.
You’ll have to pry that silver and red can from my cold, dead hands.
There is No Such Thing as an Ideal Body
It has taken me twenty years to figure out that Diet Culture is fueled by the desire to exert control over bodies.
I don’t mean your personal desire for your own body to look a certain way; I mean society’s willingness to deem certain bodies “good” or “bad” based on their appearance or functionality.
Never did I ever think that learning to *not hate* my body could be considered a radical act. But I kept re-engaging in the cycle because I hadn’t given up the idea that my body needed to be controlled.
Think about it. People who have the *audacity* to exist in bodies that are outside of socially accepted “norms” are either called disgusting OR… brave.
I do not want to be called brave for carrying around a bit of extra flesh. That feels absurd.
Ah yes, a few rolls, stretch marks, and some cellulite: the marks of true bravery.
The truth? It wouldn’t be considered brave if we were genuinely accepting of body diversity.
I’m still on this journey, as it turns out. I know I’ve got work to do in loving and accepting my own body, but I know that the work I’m doing is making an impact—not just on me but also on the people in my life.
I’ve had conversations with friends who’ve also done this work, and we can agree- the time we spend in each other’s presence, free of self-hate-promoting narratives, is a breath of fresh air.
I tend to take that space for granted, but it’s one I’ve cultivated intentionally over the years. Now, when I have a run-in with the familiar patterns of my past, they stand out like the glaring warning signs they are.
Here’s how you can do this work:
These are small but impactful changes you can make in order to start examining and breaking down harmful narratives in your own mind and ultimately cultivating a space that feels safe for all bodies.
Eyes on Your Own Plate
No commenting on what others eat. Period. People eat for any number of reasons… they also may avoid eating for any number of reasons, and your opinion about what or how much they are eating can have long-lasting impact. Focus on what/how you’re feeding yourself, and that is all.
What anyone else is doing is ‘nunya business.
No Body Commentary
If you’ve got an opinion about someone’s body, remember this simple rule:
Shut the fuck up; no, you don’t.
If you’ve spent any time in society, you probably have some pretty fucked up ways of dissecting, measuring, and valuing the bodies around you, including your own. Do not give them a voice. And yes, that means no commentary about your own body.
Zip it, sister. Or brother. I mean it.
That also includes commentary that might seem “positive,” by the way. A well-meaning “You’ve lost weight. You look so great!” can reinforce a negative body image.
I’m not saying don’t compliment people. I’m saying get more creative. You can absolutely point out their style, character, or effort without making it about their body shape.
Making Space for Body Love
The goal of this work is to foster a sense of neutrality about people’s bodies, and that isn’t something you force by inserting a bunch of positive “praise” to offset the negative.
If you simply stop giving a voice to the negative stream of thoughts you have about bodies, you give space for something much more powerful to grow: allowance. Much like the choices people make around food, bodies look the way they do for all kinds of reasons, and your opinion, even if it’s meant to be reassuring, can compound these societal messages of bodies being either “good” or “bad.”
Bodies are not good or bad; they just ARE. They exist. Bodies should be treated with dignity and respect just for existing. Full stop.
I love that by divesting from Diet Culture, I’ve been able to cultivate more meaningful relationships, give a big middle finger to “the man,” and know that I am playing an active role in helping people love their bodies.
By cultivating a space where all bodies are treated with dignity and respect, we can collectively dismantle the toxic narratives that dominate our society. This is how we pave the way to true self-acceptance and a more compassionate world.
I say all this with the hope that perhaps if you find yourself in the dust, seeing that bandwagon bounce away into the distance and feeling as if you’ve failed, you’ll take a moment to center yourself with this new perspective and finally let the damn thing go.
