The Dangers of Diet Culture and Its Role in Eating Disorders

Erica Ricciardi, MA, NCC, LPC

In today’s society, diet culture is so deeply ingrained in our daily lives that it often goes unnoticed. It’s the casual comments about “earning” dessert after a workout, the praise for weight loss without understanding the methods behind it, and the glorification of restrictive eating in the name of “health.” While dieting may seem harmless or even necessary in a world obsessed with body image, the truth is that diet culture fuels unhealthy relationships with food and can be a major contributing factor to the development of eating disorders.

What Is Diet Culture?

Diet culture is a system of beliefs that prioritizes thinness over health, equates morality with food choices, and promotes weight loss as the ultimate goal. It’s driven by a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits off people’s insecurities, continuously pushing the message that we must shrink our bodies to be worthy of happiness, success, and acceptance. This

mindset normalizes disordered eating behaviors and can lead to long-term physical and mental health consequences.

How Diet Culture Leads to Eating Disorders

While not everyone who diets develops an eating disorder, research shows that dieting is a major risk factor. Here’s how diet culture contributes to the development of conditions like anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder:

1. Restrictive Eating Becomes the Norm

Diet culture encourages extreme food restriction—cutting out entire food groups, counting every calorie, or following rigid meal plans. These behaviors can quickly escalate into obsessive tendencies that mirror eating disorder patterns. Many people who develop anorexia or orthorexia (an obsession with “clean” eating) start with what they believe is just a “healthy” diet.

2. Demonization of Certain Foods

Labeling foods as “good” or “bad” creates guilt and shame around eating. This can lead to binge-restrict cycles, where individuals deprive themselves of “bad” foods until they eventually give in, binge, and then feel overwhelming guilt—often triggering further restriction or purging behaviors.

3. Weight Loss as a Measure of Success

The praise and validation people receive for losing weight reinforce the idea that thinner is better. For someone predisposed to an eating disorder, this can create an unhealthy fixation on maintaining or accelerating weight loss at any cost, even if it means engaging in dangerous behaviors like excessive exercise, starvation, or purging.

4. Ignoring Hunger and Fullness Cues

Many diets promote external rules rather than listening to the body’s natural hunger and satiety signals. Over time, this disconnect can lead to disordered eating habits, where individuals no longer trust their own bodies and rely on restrictive guidelines instead of intuitive eating.

5. Mental Health Decline

Diet culture not only damages physical health but also takes a severe toll on mental well-being. The pressure to achieve an unrealistic body size can lead to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, all of which are risk factors for eating disorders.

Breaking Free from Diet Culture

To prevent the harms of diet culture and reduce the risk of eating disorders, it’s essential to challenge the toxic messages we’ve been conditioned to believe. Here’s how:

• Ditch the Diet Mentality: Reject fad diets, extreme weight loss programs, and any plan that promotes restriction over nourishment.

• Practice Intuitive Eating: Listen to your body’s hunger and fullness cues rather than following external food rules.

• Diversify Your Social Media Feed: Unfollow accounts that promote diet culture and instead follow body-positive, anti-diet, and health-at-every-size advocates.

• Focus on Well-Being, Not Weight: Shift the conversation away from weight and toward overall health, which includes mental and emotional well-being.

• Speak Out Against Harmful Messages: Call out diet culture when you see it—in conversations, media, and marketing.

Final Thoughts

Diet culture masquerades as a path to health and happiness, but in reality, it promotes harmful behaviors that can spiral into serious eating disorders. By recognizing and rejecting diet culture, we can foster a more balanced and compassionate relationship with food, our bodies, and ourselves. True health isn’t about shrinking your body—it’s about nourishing it, both physically and mentally.

If you or someone you know is struggling with disordered eating, reach out to a professional for support. You deserve to live a life free from food guilt and body shame.