Non-Diet Nutrition Explained (Part 1)
Non-Diet Nutrition challenges conventional beliefs about dieting and takes a more holistic approach to food, nutrition, and health. This blog is Part 1 of 2 looking at the non-diet approach to nutrition.
Before explaining what non-diet nutrition is and how it works, it’s important to look at why a non-diet approach is needed.
Dieting Doesn’t Work.
If you aren’t familiar with the non-diet approach or Intuitive Eating, this might be difficult to believe or accept, and understandably so.
While dieting can suppress weight in the short term, the fact is, dieting does not work in the long term for the vast majority of people and research has consistently backed this up. In fact, this has been shown in research as far back as the 1950s (1).
What the science shows
The specific numbers vary among individual studies, but overall they show that dieting fails for 80% to 95% of people
One comprehensive study found that, 90% to 95% of people regain as much as two-thirds of the weight they lost within 1 year and almost all of it within 5 years (2)
People’s weight usually reaches its lowest point around 6 months into a diet and then starts increasing, and the rate of weight regain increases over time (3)
A single episode of weight loss can increase the risk of becoming overweight by 3-fold in women and 2-fold in men. Women who reported two or more weight-loss episodes had an even higher (5-fold increased) risk of becoming overweight (4)
One-third to two-thirds of dieters gain back significantly more weight than they’d lost (5)
Dieting is Harmful
Not only does dieting not work, it is also in fact harmful in many ways.
Dieting creates a negative relationship with food
- Encourages the labelling of food as good/bad, healthy/unhealthy etc., which attaches a moral value to food whereby you feel shame (among other things) if you can’t stick only eating ‘good’, ‘healthy’ foods.
- This can be particularly harmful to children – they can internalise this and view themselves as ‘bad’ for eating the ‘bad’ ‘unhealthy’ foods
Dieting creates harmful weight cycling
- The weight cycling (or yo-yo dieting) we experience through multiple diets is harmful
- It can lead to metabolic, hormonal, and cardiovascular issues
Dieting creates psychological issues
- Body image issues, self-esteem issues, increased stress and anxiety are common consequences of the feelings of failure associated with ‘failing’ to lose weight or enough weight.
- It can also contribute to disordered eating behaviours and the development of eating disorders
Diet Culture is Sneaky
Dieting and diet culture is pervasive in our society, we have all grown up in diet culture. It is so pervasive; you may be dieting without being on a formal ‘diet’.
All the below are diets by another name
Counting macros
Intermittent fasting
A ‘lifestyle change’
Counting calories or points
Tracking food consumed apps
Cleanses and Detoxes
Wellness plan
Meal plans
Cutting out certain foods or foods groups when there is no medical or moral reason to do so (e.g. gluten when not a celiac)
Dieting is any behaviour you engage with for the intention of losing or maintaining weight. It is hallmarked by rigid rules dictating - how much you can eat, when you can eat, what you can eat.
Why Don’t Diets Work?
Our bodies are designed to protect us from starvation, through complex hormonal and metabolic processes. Our bodies however cannot tell the difference between a famine and a diet – they do not know we are consciously choosing to restrict calorie intake.
When we engage in dieting
The body adapts to conserve energy. This means that the body needs fewer calories to maintain weight, making it easier to regain weight.
The body adapts the hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin), leading to an increased appetite, making it harder to sustain weight loss over time.
The restriction and deprivation can lead to a preoccupation with food which can lead to overeating or binge eating.
Set point theory outlines that our genetics dictate a weight range for our body. This cannot be controlled. As our weight naturally changes (e.g. during pregnancy, illness etc), the body’s mechanisms are designed to regulate weight and seeks to return to this predetermined set point range. However, through yo-yo dieting, this set point range actually increases.
Additionally, controlling our weight is not as simple as calories in, calories out. There are many factors that determine our weight, of which food and exercise are just two. Many determined by genetics.
Read Part 2, where I look at what a healthy relationship with food actually looks like, what the non-diet approach is and how it works.
References
A.J. Stunkard and M. McLaren-Hume, ‘The Results of Treatment for Obesity: A Review of the Literature and Report of a Series’, A.M.A. Archives of Internal Medicine 103 (1959)
National Institutes of Health (NIH), ‘Methods for Voluntary Weight Loss and Control’, Annals of Internal Medicine 116, no.11 (1992)
M.L. Dansinger et al., ‘Meta Analysis: The Effect of Dietary Counselling for Weight Loss’’, Annals of Internal Medicine 147 no.1 (2007)
Abdul G. Dulloo, Jean Jacquet and Jean-Pierre Montani, ‘How dieting makes some fatter: from a perspective of human body composition autoregulation’, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society (2012)
Traci Mann et al., ‘Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer,’ American Psychologist 62, no.3 (2007)
Christy Harrison, ‘Anti-Diet’, Yellow Kite (2019)