It may seem like everyone around you is on a diet. The truth is that, in any given year, about half of U.S. adults try to lose weight, usually by eating less food. Unfortunately, diets rarely work – and they actually increase your chance of developing an eating disorder or other health problems.
Below, we explain what it means to diet, why dieting can lead to eating disorders and when to get help.
What does dieting mean? It’s changing what you eat and drink
Dieting is changing your eating habits as a way that’s meant to improve your health. In the U.S., we generally talk about dieting as a way to lose weight. Most of the time, when a person diets for weight loss, they try to eat less food. These changes to eating habits are usually temporary, and once a person meets their weight loss goal, they return to old behaviors.
Extreme dieting is where you make big changes very quickly
Extreme dieting means you’re making drastic changes to your diet – and often exercise levels – to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. Extreme diets aren’t healthy or effective for long-term weight management.
Fad foods and weight loss supplements are often used as part of extreme diets. At best, fad diets cost a lot and have no proven health benefits. At worst, they can cause health problems.
Weight loss supplements are even more dangerous. Supplements are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Side effects can include panic attacks, atrial fibrillation, nausea and paranoia in patients who have paired these medications with a starvation diet.
Is dieting bad? How dieting can affect your body and mind
Dieting to lose weight can be very damaging to your physical and mental health. Here are some reasons why:
Even if you lose weight, it rarely stays off
Our culture is filled with messages about how to lose weight quickly. But the truth is that most diets are bound to fail. In fact, studies show that 80-95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it back in one to five years.
Still, it’s common to think that the results of your next diet will be better if you just eat even less or exercise even more. This can result in repeat dieting – also called yo-yo dieting. But the more you diet and the bigger changes you make, the harder it becomes to sustain weight loss.
It’s important to call out that regaining weight after a diet is not a personal failing. It usually has less to do with your eating habits and more to do with how your body changes when you lose weight.
Low energy can keep you from enjoying life
It’s hard to be at your best when cutting calories is making you hungry. If you’re not eating enough, your body won’t have enough fuel to get you through the day. Mood changes are common, and you may feel irritable, sluggish or have difficulty focusing. You may find yourself struggling to participate in the things that you want or need to do.
Your body may metabolize food differently
You probably expect that your calorie needs go down as you lose weight. It makes sense that a body that weighs 200 pounds doesn’t need as much fuel as one that weighs 300 pounds. But it’s not as simple as that.
Eating fewer calories and skipping meals can cause your metabolism to slow down. The body has a response mechanism to prevent starvation. When we eat less, the body senses a reduction in calories and will hold on to weight. At the same time, hormonal changes can also increase hunger signals, which makes it harder to stick to any diet plans. And when you stop your diet, the changes to your metabolism and hunger signals may not go away. This makes it very easy to regain the weight.
Dieting can lead to food and weight obsessions
Obsession with food and dieting can affect your eating behaviors and cause a rigid mindset about what’s healthy and what’s not. When dieting, it’s common to become focused on eating “safe” foods, usually ones that are lower in fat and calories.
After eating “something bad” or “too much,” it can sometimes intensify feelings of guilt and shame. This can contribute to a cycle of restricting, bingeing, purging or excessive exercise.
Dieting may affect your relationships
Being on a diet can distance you from family, friends and social gatherings. You may cut out entire food groups or become very rigid in your eating, to the point it impacts your ability to participate in life activities. You may put your diet above everything and everyone else in your life.
Dieting can also damage your health
Yo-yo dieting can significantly affect your physical or mental health, regardless of your weight. Repeat dieting increases your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, mental health conditions and eating disorders.
Why dieting can lead to eating disorders
There’s a clear link between repeat dieting and developing eating disorder symptoms. Not everyone who goes on a diet will get an eating disorder, but frequent dieting makes it more likely.
The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) states that those who diet moderately are five times more likely to develop an eating disorder. Extreme dieting further increases your risk of an eating disorder – it makes you 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder when compared to those who don’t diet, according to research.
How dieting can lead to anorexia
Dieting can lead to anorexia when a diet becomes so restrictive you have an imbalance of energy intake and energy expenditure. As this process progresses and you start to lose weight, you’re actually starving your body. This can lead to a preoccupation with food and urges to overeat. There are also mood changes including irritability, increased anxiety, obsessive or rigid thinking and a distorted body image.
When diets go too far, you can experience all of these symptoms and inadvertently develop anorexia. Anorexia is very dangerous because your body doesn’t get the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. As a result, you may develop problems throughout your body, including conditions that affect your heart, muscles, digestion, skin and hair.
Bulimia can begin with a weight loss diet
Dieting can also lead to bulimia. When you diet, you can feel more hungry than usual. Diets often involve eliminating entire food groups or foods that you find tasty and satisfying. Over time, it can be difficult to resist hunger cues or the desire to eat foods you’ve eliminated. This can lead to binge eating or a loss of control while eating. A person who binge eats consumes a large amount of food at one time and may not feel like they can stop even when they’re full.
For some people, the guilt or shame of eating too much or the “wrong” foods, can lead to the compensatory behaviors that are associated with bulimia. Behaviors someone may use to compensate or “get rid” of food consumed during a binge include self-induced vomiting, over-exercising, restriction and laxative abuse.
Driven by a desire to lose weight, a person may find themselves in a cycle of binging and compensatory behaviors. Without treatment, bulimia can cause serious health problems like dehydration, tooth decay, ulcers and heart failure.
The relationship between dieting and binge eating disorder
Dieting can also make binge eating disorder worse. Binge eating disorder is when a person repeatedly engages in at least one binge episode a week for three months. For a person with this eating disorder, binge eating may be how they avoid or deal with difficult emotions related to trauma, bullying and body image.
Shame or embarrassment about binge eating can lead to periods of extreme or excessive dieting. But severely cutting food intake increases the urge to eat, increasing the likelihood of binge eating, which can further increase feelings of guilt and shame. If untreated, binge eating disorder can lead to health conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.
How to tell the difference between dieting and an eating disorder
There’s a fine line between a diet and an eating disorder, and one often leads to the other. A diet typically starts with the desire to lose weight or to improve health.
When someone develops an eating disorder, it becomes much more than that. An eating disorder is a mental health condition that severely affects eating behaviors and emotions. Without treatment, eating disorders can cause serious health problems, and can even be fatal.
Who to talk to about eating disorders and diet changes
Food is important, but it shouldn’t be the focus of your life.
If food and weight are always on your mind, or if you feel the need to rigidly control your food intake or exercise schedule, contact the Melrose Center for an eating disorder assessment and to start the healing process.
If you don’t have an eating disorder but would like to lose weight for health reasons, start by talking to your primary care doctor. They’ll be able to offer advice or refer you to a specialist if needed. For example, they may recommend you talk to a nutritionist.