What is Diet Culture? A Closer Look at the Invisible Force Shaping Our Relationship with Food and Body
We live in a time when conversations about food, health, and bodies are constant - but not always fully conscious. Many of the underlying beliefs we hold about what it means to ‘eat well’ or look ‘healthy’ are so deeply woven into our culture that we rarely pause to question them.
Diet culture operates quietly in the background, shaping how we think, feel, and behave around food and our bodies, often without us realising. Even for those who have never actively dieted, or who’ve consciously stepped away from dieting, traces often remain: guilt after eating a certain food, the urge to ‘make up’ for a meal, or the quiet voice that equates thinness with virtue.
So what is diet culture, really? And why does naming it matter? Let’s explore…
DEFINING DIET CULTURE
Diet culture is essentially a belief system that:
Equates thinness with health, moral virtue, and success.
It promotes the idea that being in a smaller body is the ideal and that people who achieve this ideal are more disciplined, attractive, and worthy.Elevates weight loss and body control as a pathway to wellness.
It places enormous value on changing your body - especially through restricting food, exercising to burn calories, or 'eating clean' - often under the guise of health.Marginalises bodies that don't conform.
Diet culture stigmatises people in larger bodies, suggesting they are less healthy, less capable, or even less deserving of care. It upholds systemic fatphobia and creates a hierarchy of bodies.
When we ‘buy in’ to diet culture and place body weight at the centre of our health and wellbeing - which is something we tend to do unwittingly, as its message is so pervasive - it teaches us to distrust our innate body wisdom, pleasure and satisfaction around food, replacing them with rules, rigidity, and fear. This might be fear that our bodies won’t meet cultural expectations, fear of weight gain, or anxiety around certain foods.
While this might sound extreme, I’m pretty sure most of us can relate to it on some level.
Have you ever felt guilty for eating something you enjoyed?
Or felt hungry but skipped a meal anyway to ‘make up’ for a big dinner?
Or praised someone for losing weight without knowing the story behind it?
Or felt you needed to ‘earn’ your food through exercise?
These are all everyday expressions of diet culture, subtle and often unquestioned, yet often deeply embedded in how we relate to food, our bodies, and even each other.
A Brief History - Where Did Diet Culture Come From?
The roots of diet culture can be traced back centuries, but it became particularly prominent in Western societies in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In Victorian England, bodily control was linked to morality and social status, particularly for women.
By the 1920s, the ideal female body had shifted to a slimmer, more athletic look, coinciding with increased marketing of slimming products.
In the post-war 1950s and 60s, dieting became mainstream, with calorie-counting and weight-loss clubs entering popular culture.
The 1980s and 90s saw the explosion of the fitness and diet industries, with low-fat everything, supermodels, and celebrity-endorsed regimens shaping ideals.
In recent decades, the seeds of body positivity began to take root. For a while, it felt as though greater body diversity was becoming more accepted - that there was space for different shapes, sizes, and experiences to be seen and valued. And yet, diet culture didn’t disappear. It simply became more covert.
The overt drive to lose weight was rebranded through the language of ‘wellness’, ‘clean eating’, and ‘biohacking’. Diet culture learned to co-opt the language of empowerment, body positivity, and even mental health - but the underlying message remained unchanged: your body is a problem to be solved.
In the past couple of years, we’ve also seen the rapid rise in popularity of weight loss medications and body-altering interventions. This surge has left many questioning whether the progress made toward body acceptance is beginning to unravel, as if the cultural tide is turning back toward control, conformity, and body dissatisfaction, only with new tools and updated packaging.
And diet culture is not just a set of beliefs (the diet mentality) - it is big business. The global weight loss and diet control market is valued at over £200 billion, and in the UK alone, it is worth more than £2 billion annually. From slimming clubs and supplements to fitness tech, cosmetic procedures, and ‘wellness’ products, the industry profits from our insecurity - often by selling temporary solutions that lead us right back into the same cycle.
So, you can see that whilst diet culture has evolved over the decades, the core message - that your worth is determined by your body shape or size or your ability to control food - remains largely unchanged. And the more we feel we’re not enough, the more we believe we need to buy to fix ourselves.
How to Recognise Diet Culture Today
Diet culture is so normalised that it can hide in plain sight. Here are some more sneaky ways it can show up in everyday life:
Moral language around food: labelling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, feeling guilty after eating something indulgent, or earning food through exercise.
Complimenting weight loss as a sign of health or success, without knowing the context.
Pursuing health by shrinking the body, even when it's framed as ‘just wanting to feel better’.
Believing some bodies are more ‘disciplined’ or ‘motivated’ than others - especially when those bodies are thinner.
Thinking of eating as a problem to be solved, rather than a relationship to be nurtured.
Normalising restrictive behaviours like skipping meals, avoiding food groups, or fasting, especially when labelled as ‘healthy’.
It is also found in workplaces, healthcare systems, schools, supermarkets, movies, social media algorithms, and casual conversations - often unchallenged.
Why It Matters
Diet culture doesn’t just influence what we eat - it can profoundly affect our mental health, self-worth, and our ability to care for and connect with our bodies. It drives anxiety, guilt, body shame, and a sense of never being ‘enough,’ even among those who appear outwardly healthy or successful.
The problem isn’t only that dieting rarely works - it’s that it can actually cause harm. Decades of research show that most intentional weight loss efforts are not sustained over time. A comprehensive review by Mann et al. (2007) found that up to two-thirds of people regain more weight than they lost. This pattern of weight cycling - repeated losing and regaining - is associated with increased inflammation, hypertension, and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
Beyond physical effects, weight stigma itself has been shown to contribute to psychological distress. Studies confirm that people who experience weight-based discrimination are more likely to struggle with depression, disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and even avoid seeking medical care - all of which undermine health, regardless of actual body size (Puhl & Heuer, 2009).
And, diet culture can erode our trust in our own bodies. Instead of tuning into internal cues like hunger, fullness, satisfaction, or emotional needs, we are taught to override them with external rules and restrictions. Over time, this disconnection can leave us feeling at war with ourselves - physically, mentally, and emotionally.
A Different Path is Possible
I believe people have the autonomy to define their own goals, and I understand that for many, those goals will be shaped by diet culture. Afterall, when weight loss is framed as the key to confidence, health, success, or self-worth, it is incredibly easy to believe it is the answer. And many well-meaning health professionals continue to support this, genuinely wanting to help people feel better.
But there is another path. Practitioners like myself who have witnessed time and again, the emotional, physical, and psychological toll of chasing weight loss, are offering something different. We have trained in Intuitive Eating Counselling, body image work, and the Health at Every Size® approach and are passionate about helping people improve their ‘whole health’ whilst protecting them from the harms of diet culture and disordered eating.
In fact, there is growing evidence that these ‘weight-neutral’ approaches can lead to improved mental and metabolic health, sustainable behaviour change, and better body image outcomes - all without focusing on weight loss (Bacon et al., 2005; Bacon & Aphramor, 2011).
REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS
Noticing and naming diet culture is a first step toward reclaiming your relationship with food, movement, and your body. It helps create space between you and the beliefs you may have absorbed - space to pause, reflect, and choose more consciously.
So where does diet culture show up in your life?
In the way you speak to yourself after eating?
In how you choose your clothes? The cookbooks you buy?
In the goals you set for your health? The bathroom scales?
In the quiet rules that govern what you feel you should do?
Bringing awareness to these patterns opens the door to deeper, more personal questions:
What does health really mean to me - beyond appearance?
Is my body actually OK, just as it is? Is it already healthy enough for the life I want to live?
What might it feel like to stop striving and start trusting?
These are not easy questions in a culture that constantly tells us we are not enough. But they are powerful questions. Brave questions. The kind that can begin to loosen the grip of diet culture and lead us back to ourselves.
MY CONCLUSIONS
Seeing diet culture for what it is a powerful step for anyone struggling with food and their body. Even realising the financial scale of diet culture can help build understanding of just how systemic and strategic it is, and shift your narrative from “this is my personal failing” to “this is a billion-pound industry designed to keep me doubting myself and buying its ‘fixes’.”
And while you may not be able to escape diet culture entirely (it’s everywhere, after all), you can choose to step off the cycle. You can start seeing through it and opt out of a life ruled by striving, self-correction, and conditional self-worth tied to body weight.
If you are craving a gentler, more sustainable path to health and wellbeing, one that honours the whole of who you are, then I encourage you to start with curiosity and check-out the questions above.
And if you would like support with your relationship to food or body image, I’m here. I offer non-diet, weight-neutral nutrition support rooted in Intuitive Eating, body respect, and a compassionate, inclusive approach to health.
Take a nourishing step forward today
Are worries about food, weight, or overeating draining your time, energy, and peace of mind? Are you struggling with low mood, persistent food cravings, poor gut health or digestive challenges?
Old mindsets and habits can be hard to shift on your own. If you are looking to find peace with food and your body, and eat with more confidence and ease, I can help you.
Please check out my private programmes here, or book an exploratory chat to find out more.
