The Impact of Dieting on Mental Health

Dieting is disordered eating. It's a fine (often overlapping) line away from an eating disorder and research shows it's often a huge contributing factor to developing full-blown eating disorders - which, I might add have the highest mortality rates of all mental illnesses. Our diet-obsessed culture is screwing up our relationships with food and ourselves on such a massive scale that it’s made disordered eating, not only socially acceptable but expected and normal. Disordered eating is so normal that many people either minimize or don’t even realize the impact it has on their mental and physical health. We’re taught that health and happiness with ourselves and our bodies requires being super controlled with what goes in our mouth, even when it comes at a huge emotional and physical cost. Harmful consequences can include a greater risk of obesity and eating disorders, bone loss, gastrointestinal disturbances, electrolyte and fluid imbalances, low heart rate and blood pressure, increased anxiety and depression, and social isolation. In this episode, I talk about the mental health impact of dieting, including my own experience with dieting and the binge eating, bulimia, depression, and anxiety it created.