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Diets are a risky lifestyle choice that many of us feel forced into at some point. It’s not just the 300 calorie frozen meal commercials that influence us; it’s our own friends, family, and coworkers. Diets have been so ingrained within our everyday happenings that the majority of us both accept and encourage diet culture.

That is, the belief that restricting or—at best—completely altering one’s food intake will lead to a better life. The not-so-invisible ink in this belief is that the better life comes from the better physical appearance that a better diet will lead to. We’re told that we’ll be prettier and hotter if we eat better. 

Diet culture, as we know it, is striving for pretty privilege under the guise of “health.” We know the “health” factor of diets is nothing but a ruse based on how we treat anyone whose body doesn’t quite mirror the bodies of influencers, models, sex symbols, and reality stars. 

Diet culture is so rampantly fatphobic that even our doctors participate. Ask ten people size 12 and up if a doctor has ever told them that they need to lose weight to be healthy. Then, follow that question to clarify: Did the doctor first ask about nutrition or physical activity? There’s a good chance a handful will say that the doctor did not ask about their diet or workouts before labeling them unhealthy, and I’d be one of them.

I still remember a teenage visit to my primary care physician. He was always so nice, but I can’t help but harp on the time he told me: “It never hurts to lose weight.” That remark was weird to me because he had just finished telling me that I was perfectly healthy in every other way. My only mistake was to weigh more than the Body Mass Index (BMI) chart said that I should.

(I guess it’s a good time to also point out that the BMI chart isn’t even ethnically universal and my ancestors were not considered in this scientific study that I am suddenly supposed to mold myself into. But, that’s a conversation for another day.)

The question here and now is: Why don’t diets work?

What Is a Diet?

We must first know the meaning of diets to understand why they don’t work. A diet by definition is harsh. It is “a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.” A diet is basically a jarring interruption in your food intake, intended to yield positive benefits. Whether or not diets actually lead to positive outcomes is debatable.

Here, we lean towards the side of diets doing more harm than good. Non-medical diets are usually done for aesthetics and as a way to gain confidence. Contrary to popular belief, these types of diets are not needed to live a happy life. A diet is only a necessity when it’s done for medical reasons, such as omitting dairy if you developed a lactose intolerance or avoiding salty foods for high cholesterol.

Why Do Diets Fail?

The short answer to why diets don’t work is because diets are arbitrary. Yes, they are real and many are based on science. Yet just like BMI, this science is often not universal and can exclude large subsets of the population. Diets, by default, are too often exclusive, while still being marketed as your answer to health. That’s not the truth; and it’s certainly not reality. Your health is specific to you and someone who has never met you and never read your medical history will not be able to tell you what your body needs. 

Let’s look at the keto diet, for example. This popular fad diet wants us to eat as few carbs as possible to shed the pounds. For many, this works, but at what cost? Keto implies that carbs are bad, carbs are stubborn, and carbs contribute to weight gain or stagnancy. There could be some truth in this, but these implications are largely misleading. Most scientists and doctors alike agree that carbohydrates are a vital component of a balanced diet.

This is because carbs break down into glucose (or blood sugar) and then provide energy. A keto diet asks that you restrict your body from receiving a key player in your health, and encourages you to find ways to supplement that, such as eating excess fat.

That’s kind of the trick to diets. A diet is basically a giant puzzle that creates the perfect picture of an imbalanced diet.

So How Do You Eat Healthy?

Despite being promoted as the way to eat healthily, diets include some form of restriction, limitation, and/or micro-monitoring of food intake. This is vastly different from eating healthy. On the contrary, this lifestyle can get quite obsessive.

One look through fitness social media content and you’ll see just how hyper-vigilant people can be towards their diets that only exist for them to meet a super specific body type that is unnatural for most. The worst part about diets is that it may often take some time for you to realize that you are obsessing over a diet that goes against your natural body’s needs. Next thing you know, you’re stuck in an endless circle of dieting and falling off. 

We’ve been exposed to this obsessive diet culture for so long that it may take some time to learn how to have a healthy relationship with food again. To start out, try intuitive eating to break the diet cycle. Intuitive eating is all about developing a positive relationship with food by understanding that there are no good or bad foods. It is a “non-diet” lifestyle in which we trust ourselves to nourish our bodies by eating what—and how much—of what makes us feel good.

When you eat intuitively, you are ignoring everything you’ve learned about diet culture. You do not restrict, limit, or micro-manage. If carbs are what feels good to you, then you may find yourself eating pasta daily. Intuitive eating is not a green light to ignore your body's needs. It is not an invitation to only sweets if you’re pre-diabetic, for example. It is an invitation to respect your body and mind. 

Accept your hunger. Accept that you may not fit in the BMI or look like the sex symbol of the month. You are still very much desirable and deserve to put in your body what feels natural and makes you happy.