Can I Really Reject The Diet Mentality?
By Kelsey Chadwick, MS RDN
July 3rd, 2025
“Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet or food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.”
– Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, p. 46
The very first principle of intuitive eating is Reject the Diet Mentality — and it’s a big one. It’s usually one of the first things we talk about when someone starts their intuitive eating journey, but here’s the thing: it’s not something you check off once and move on from. In my experience as a registered dietitian working with hundreds of clients, rejecting the diet mentality is something we revisit again and again.
Why? Because we live in a diet culture world and the diet mentality is everywhere— from social media and magazine covers to casual conversations with friends and family.
So… what exactly is the diet mentality?
Great question! It can look a little different for everyone, but generally speaking, the diet mentality is the mindset that you need to restrict your food — either by eating less or cutting out specific foods — in order to control your body.
An example of diet culture can look something like this— you had a few social outings over the weekend and then told yourself “clean eating” starts on Monday morning. As an intuitive eater, there would be no “clean eating” on Monday and you would become more comfortable being present at these gatherings, enjoying various types of foods while honoring your hunger and fullness.
Other examples of the diet mentality may include:
Not allowing certain foods be kept in the home
Engaging in conversations about changing your body size
Consistently weighing yourself
Using apps to track food intake such as myfitnesspal
Engaging in fad diets such as Noom or Weight Watchers
Diet culture ultimately leads us to feel like a failure when the latest diet we try doesn’t work, when in reality it’s the diet that doesn’t work. Our body is doing exactly what it’s designed to do— protect us. Rejecting the diet mentality means committing to working with your body, not against it.
In addition to the never ending diet cycle, I think it’s important to mention the social aspect of dieting in today’s society. Let’s face it, dieting has (unfortunately) become a way of connecting with others. It’s a topic of conversation at dinner parties, school pick up, doctor’s visits, family gatherings and holiday events. All of this can make giving up dieting for good really challenging and you may even feel like you’re grieving your dieting days.
In order to truly move away from dieting, it’s important to reflect and explore your own dieting history and how it has impacted your life in various ways. Dieting can affect our lives behaviorally, socially, psychologically and physically. Rejecting the diet mentality is giving up dieting for good and leaving all of the fad and trendy diets behind. This doesn’t happen overnight, (although an “AHA” moment can happen to help get us there) it takes time.
Chances are you may have been dieting for years and years, maybe even decades. That’s a long time! And changing the way you think about food and your body takes time as well. It’s important to give yourself grace, patience and self-compassion along the way.
Below are some reflection questions to help you start exploring your relationship with the diet mentality:
If you’re already in the process of rejecting the diet mentality, what lingering thoughts might still be present surrounding dieting?
If diets worked, why do I continue to have to diet? Read my blog post on what happens when we diet here :)
What areas of life does diet culture keep popping up in?
How has dieting affected my life?