I Quit Dieting Years Ago. So Why Does Diet Mentality Still Show Up?

In December of this year, I’ll celebrate six years of recovery from sugar/flour addiction and yo-yo dieting.

I’ve had tremendous success.

I’ve worn the same clothing size since losing weight. I’ve learned how to cook and prepare Real Forking Food after years of frozen pizza and takeout dinners. I haven’t needed to join another diet program or felt like I constantly needed to lose weight.

I’m no longer obsessing about my appearance or one particular body part, or worrying about whether I’ll feel comfortable wearing a dress to a party. I haven’t eaten junk food in secret or hidden the wrappers. I haven’t binged or experienced out-of-control eating.

And yet, despite all these years of freedom from the behaviors that once controlled me, some of the old diet thinking still shows up.

I notice it in a few places.

I still weigh myself, and if the scale starts going up, I can feel myself worry. I’m still within my healthy body-weight range. I’m strong and fit. And yet the fear can surface quickly that I’ll somehow slide back into my former, larger body and feel out of control again.

Then the urges to “fix it” return.

I need to work out.

I need to eat less today.

I need to restrict my food.

I need to do something NOW.

I want results fast, even while knowing I don’t want to live that way anymore.

What I’ve learned is that recovery and freedom from dieting don’t necessarily mean never having another diet thought.

Freedom means the thought no longer gets to run your life.

When I hear those thoughts, I have an internal conversation with the parts of me that are trying to save me from feeling stuck or out of control.

I remind myself:

I don’t need another extreme solution.

I want peace and joy.

I want to live my life without obsessing over food and my body.

I don’t need to work out because I’m afraid of gaining weight.

I don’t need to eat less today.

I don’t need to restrict.

I can keep eating my food and living my life. I will be okay.

I can hear those thoughts now without automatically obeying them. That is what freedom looks like to me.

When diet culture becomes diet mentality

We live in a culture saturated with messages about weight loss: programs, products, before-and-after photos, quick fixes, challenges, cleanses, and promises that this will finally be the thing that works.

Over time, those messages can become something internal: diet mentality.

We learn to believe we can follow something for a little while, reach a goal weight, which is a single number, and then return to “normal.”

Instead of working toward a way of eating and living that we can sustain, we become willing to do something painful or extreme for a while because we want a result quickly.

The number on the scale becomes the primary measure of success. A thin ideal is valued above other body shapes and sizes. Foods acquire moral labels, and somehow we become “good” or “bad” because of what we ate that day.

For someone like me, those beliefs were reinforced for decades. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me that nearly six years of recovery didn’t simply erase them.

Unlearning is part of recovery, too

After 40+ years of absorbing these beliefs, turning them off isn't as simple as flipping a switch.

It means noticing them when they appear.

Questioning them.

Reminding myself of what I now know.

And, little by little, writing a different story.

My own journey has taught me that this work isn't a quick fix. But I also don't need to wait until every old thought disappears to consider myself free. Because today, those thoughts can show up without dictating what I do next.

I can hear them without obeying them.

And each time I do that, I practice a different way of living. One day at a time, that becomes my new normal.

That’s Real Forking Change.