In today’s culture, “diet” is often synonymous with restriction and deprivation. Ironically, the word derives from the Latin word “dieta”; This word refers to everything you eat or drink in a day. But social media influencers have taken this saying to a whole new level.
As you scroll through social media, you’ll find #whatieatinaday videos featuring individuals telling you what foods you should and shouldn’t eat to look like them. These videos promote unrealistic goals and potentially unhealthy food choices, pushing certain diets that restrict or eliminate certain nutrients. These constant reminders also highlight a major problem in our society: the obsession with looking thin. This mindset has become more important than a healthy relationship with food.
This pressure to be thin and look a certain way has also led to an increase in disordered eating and a focus on finding the right diet (any diet at any cost) to be thin. While the drive to be thin is not new, the growth of social media, especially videos, has made more content available than ever before.
In response to these trends, some registered dietitians recommend a different method called “anti-diet.” The goal is to create a healthy connection with and enjoy food, rather than focusing on each bite you eat and categorizing foods as “good” or “bad.”
Below you’ll find an explanation of the anti-diet trend and the pros and cons of following this method. Several registered dietitians also weigh in on using this approach and how to determine if it’s right for you.
What is the Anti-Diet Trend?
Anti-diet or non-diet tendency in general Does not support Dieting for any non-medical reason, whether for weight loss or simply to have a smaller body, says Lauren Harris-Pincus, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian. “The anti-diet movement is a rebellion against the harms of diet culture.”
This type of nutritional counseling opposes the idea of counting calories, restrictive meal plans, and tracking and measuring every bite you consume. Instead, it promotes overall well-being, challenges placing moral values on foods (“good” and “bad”), and argues against preoccupation with food, says Christy Wilson, RDN, a registered dietitian.
“The anti-diet movement may be a ‘trend,’” he says. “But for practitioners, it is a lifestyle approach that rejects the shackles of diet culture. The anti-diet movement is not anti-health, as some might think; it is a recognition that health and wellness can be achieved in ways that allow for flexibility in eating and physical activity.”
The anti-diet trend also honors people’s preferences, lifestyles, cultural diets, and joyful movements. While it’s true that you may occasionally see a registered dietitian say, “I wanted to have a bowl of M&Ms for dinner and I ate them,” this is usually not the norm. These statements take the anti-diet approach in the opposite direction. and that’s not what the concept is about.
An integral part of the anti-diet movement is intuitive eating; It’s an approach that encourages eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you feel full. It also encourages you to enjoy every bite as you chew and eat sitting at a table or by the window when you’re comfortable in front of the computer. This approach improves psychological health and reduces the risk of impaired eating behaviors.
Why Is This Trend So Popular?
Simply put, diets are off. Wilson says people are tired of restrictive diets, meal plans, and diet culture’s obsession with body image and body size. They also find it liberating to hear that you can eat whatever you want while improving your health.
The truth is, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to long-term health, and “healthy” isn’t tied to a specific size or appearance. With this in mind, the anti-diet approach honors body neutrality and the fact that everyone’s body is different.
“Being free from tracking and food restriction is a relief for people who have been told by medical providers, family, friends, partners and others that there is only one way to lose weight and achieve health,” says Wilson.
The anti-diet approach focuses on lifestyle changes rather than short-term fad diets that produce short-term (and in some cases dangerous) results. It’s also a neutral approach to health that encourages people to have a healthy relationship with food rather than staring at a number on the scale.
However, this approach takes time to achieve. Therefore, it is important for people to seek care from licensed dietitians and health care providers who are trained on this subject.
Pros and Cons of the Anti-Diet Approach
Pros:
- Focuses on lifestyle changes that can positively impact long-term health
- Takes into account the whole person, not just food, weight and body size
- Takes into account personal preferences regarding food, movement, sleep and stress management, which can encourage positive lifestyle changes that are more likely to last
- It removes the moral value that many people attach to food (“good” and “bad”)
- Avoids restrictive diets, allowing people to allow any food in their overall diet to minimize guilt and shame
- Reduces the likelihood of a restricting/binge eating cycle associated with limiting or eliminating certain foods
Cons:
- It can be misinterpreted into believing that it allows people to eat whatever they want, in whatever quantity they want.
- It doesn’t work for everyone; monitoring and planning works better for some people
What Do Experts Say?
According to Harris-Pincus, there are nuances to the anti-diet conversation, and it’s much more complex than simply listening to your body and eating what you crave. For example, people with metabolic obesity have dysregulation of energy metabolism and changes in signals between the brain and fat cells. She says the “listen to your body” advice doesn’t always work when hunger hormones increase due to this signaling issue.
Some dietitians have also expressed concern that this trend could lead to weight gain, which could be uncomfortable for some. But according to Wilson, weight is not the only determinant of health. “Health is a state of well-being; it is a collective state, not body size. If someone breaks away from highly restrictive or perhaps disordered eating behaviors and begins to take an anti-diet approach, weight may initially increase, then stabilize.”
Additionally, when people make dietary changes to reach a certain number on a certain scale, the changes are often short-lived, Wilson adds. Fad diets that result in rapid weight loss can ultimately lead to weight cycling, and research suggests this can be detrimental to health.
Anti-diet counseling aims to help people change their attitudes towards food, establish consistent meal times, increase food variety and encourage eating for nutrition, Wilson says And pleasure. This is a long process and can cause weight fluctuations over time.
Is It Suitable For You?
Harris-Pincus explains that the anti-diet approach aims to establish or re-establish a healthy relationship with food, but that doesn’t work for everyone. “Every human body is unique, and each individual’s needs will vary depending on medical history, food preferences, cultural influences, access to food, culinary skills, time constraints, and more.”
She recommends consulting with a registered dietitian who is trained to work with anyone who wants to lose weight in a healthy, patient-centered way. You can also use other resources, such as MyPlate, a simple and effective model created by the USDA in 2011. The website offers information, helpful tools and recipes to help people of all ages start a healthy diet. This model can also be adapted to include cultural and regional foods.
The Mediterranean Diet is another option that has been supported by health experts for years due to the positive health results of its plant-focused and balanced nutritional approach. For heart and cardiovascular health, the DASH Diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) is an evidence-based, sodium-controlled diet that includes a variety of foods like the Mediterranean Diet.
If brain health and cognitive health are particularly important, the MIND Diet (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) combines the two dietary approaches mentioned above. It is also plant-focused and can be adapted to vegetarian, flexitarian and vegan lifestyles.
The above approaches support long-term health and cover all food groups. They are also flexible and adaptable to accommodate cultural foods and are sustainable in terms of health and wellness. They even fit perfectly into the anti-diet approach because long-term nutrition plans focus on what to include in your diet for health rather than how to restrict your diet to lose weight.
In conclusion
The anti-diet approach encourages eating for pleasure and health and focuses on what you should include in your diet for optimal nutrition, rather than what to remove or restrict to lose weight. It also helps build a healthy relationship with food.
But if building (or rebuilding) your relationship with food and the anti-diet approach isn’t your thing, other science-based approaches will work, too. My motto as an RD is “you do it”; Do what’s right for you, not because of what you see on TikTok.