In January, like every “New Year, New You” cliché in the book, I started a diet. In the time-honoured tradition immortalised by Bridget Jones and her famous red diary, I stripped off, creaked myself onto the scales, winced at the result, and diligently recorded the numbers in a freshly downloaded weight-loss app.
Keen to finally take my health seriously after a lifetime of alternating between carb-binging and pecking at spartan diet “snacks” that barely resembled food, I fully committed to the plan. My kitchen cupboards were soon stacked with quinoa and chia seeds and “nutritional yeast”, whatever the heck that was; my fridge shelves groaned with cottage cheese and greens and Greek yoghurt. I made every nutritionally balanced meal from scratch, stopped drinking anything other than water and herbal tea, kicked my refined sugar and snacking habits and strove to exercise four times a week. Within a month, I had lost more than a stone, was sleeping like a log and my mental health had never been better.
It wasn’t the first January diet I’d ever embarked upon, but this time around there was one stark difference: the whole endeavour was tinged with shame. Being “on a diet” felt like my dirty little secret, something sordid to “admit to” rather than being a cause for positivity. Although I knew my reasons were sound – overweight, alcohol dependent and eating processed crap 80 per cent of the time, I wanted more than anything to simply take care of my body for a change – I found myself proffering caveats, apologies and excuses any time I had to come out of the diet closet.
“I’m really just doing it for my health!” I’d say, madly overcompensating with cringe-making enthusiasm. “You don’t need to worry, I’m not going to get fixated! I’ve got a healthy relationship with my body! I love my body! Ha ha ha!!!”
Some friends were quietly supportive; others immediately radiated concern, asking probing questions as if triaging me for an eating disorder. What had brought this on? Had I really explored my own internal motives? Why was I not eating breakfast – surely that wasn’t safe? (I had started out on an intermittent fasting plan – it was completely safe.) I felt the need to explain myself, over and over again, and provide endless reassurance that I was “OK, really, I promise”.
If I was struck by the fact that making lifestyle changes to better my mental and physical health had provoked embarrassment and guilt in myself – and frequently negative knee-jerk reactions in others – I was struck even more by how much diet culture has changed over the last 20 years.
To once again reference Ms Jones, Helen Fielding’s yo-yo dieting heroine – eternally preoccupied as she was with the number on the scales and her wildly fluctuating daily calorie intake – was representative of an entire generation. In the Nineties and Noughties, every woman I knew seemed to be on some brand of insane diet constantly and was entirely open about that fact. People would breezily tell you they were “on Atkins!” or the cabbage soup diet, drink SlimFast shakes in plain view and bring celery stick-stuffed Tupperware into work. I still remember doing my first ever “detox” as a teen – it consisted of a 24-hour fast before gradually reintroducing minuscule amounts of raw vegetables over the following three days – and starting WeightWatchers with my pal at the age of just 16, despite having a perfectly healthy BMI. During my GCSE revision, I was also learning the number of “points” in every single supermarket product off by heart (unnecessary knowledge I still carry with me to this day).
I’m under no illusions; none of this was “healthy”. Diet culture was so toxic yet normalised that it has prompted a generation of women to look back and realise they were brainwashed from their earliest years, resulting in a warped relationship with food and their bodies. Social media is awash with videos of millennials sharing clips from the 2000s – tabloids branding slim, gorgeous A-listers like Jessica Simpson “fat”, or TV presenters forcing female guests such as Victoria Beckham to get on the scales live on air – and blaming them for kicking off a lifetime of disordered eating.
When you grew up amid a Wild West media cycle that called size 10 women “curvy”, speculated on celebrities’ mental health any time they put on a kilo, and championed a rail-thin aesthetic branded “heroin chic”, it’s inevitable that the topic will be a fraught one. It’s not something that most of us are capable of being even remotely “objective” about, attached as it is to our deepest adolescent wounds and insecurities. In this context, the ingrained mistrust of the word “diet” and anxiety tangled up with anything even remotely approaching restrictive eating makes perfect sense.
Back in 2000, a survey of 5,000 British women found that the average woman had gone on at least 32 diets in her life. Just one in 100 women was satisfied with her body shape and size, with 85 per cent admitting that they worried about their body every single day. More than three-quarters of women who were in the healthy weight bracket still wanted to lose an average of 10lb; four out of 10 women said that they had experienced some kind of eating disorder.
Cut to 2025, and an estimated 935,000 girls and women in the UK suffer from an eating disorder, according to charity Beat. It’s no wonder that the very idea of dieting has prompted backlash.
With the 2010s came the cultural shift of the body positivity movement, encouraging people to love their bodies at any shape or size. And, while a much-needed antidote to the self-hate of the previous decades, this came with its own set of issues. As the idea gained traction, it was frequently co-opted by conventionally attractive, slender social media influencers for one. For another, “body positivity” brought with it a certain level of unrealistic pressure and expectation: to always have to feel relentlessly good about the way that you looked, to love your body every moment of every day. Anything else felt like letting the side down.
It also prompted a huge amount of sensitivity around food as the pendulum of public opinion swung in the other direction. Prioritising your health seemed to be frowned upon by the movement’s more zealous proponents. Thinking about what you ate or wanting to lose weight was tantamount to saying that you did not love and accept your body exactly as it is right now, which went against the central tenet of “positivity”.
Since then, there has been a move away from “body positivity” and towards “body neutrality” instead – the latter referring to the goal of developing a non-judgmental way of relating to your body, focusing on its abilities rather than its appearance. The Grammy award-winning musician Lizzo, who has been on her own transformational health and weight-loss journey, has become an advocate. She told The New York Times in 2024: “There are some days I adore my body, and others when I don’t feel completely positive. The idea of body positivity, it’s moved away from the antiquated mainstream conception. It’s evolved into body neutrality.”
Looking at the younger generation, on the face of it Gen Z seems to eschew the unhealthy “diet culture” that was rife at the turn of the century. But dig a little deeper, and this health-conscious cohort is arguably just as susceptible. They may not use the word “diet”, but TikTok abounds with content around “clean eating”, protein consumption, raw foods, juicing cleanses and “what I eat in a day” videos – from an outside perspective, it looks an awful lot like the same obsession, just repackaged, rebranded and given a 2020s makeover. Alongside all this, cases of orthorexia nervosa are on the rise, according to specialist eating disorder service provider The Bridge. Though not yet officially recognised as a clinical diagnosis, orthorexia describes “the behaviour or disordered eating when an individual has an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating, clean eating or pure foods … An obsession with nutrition that starts to take over an individual’s life”.
And then, of course, there’s the other side of the same body-conscious coin: the increasing number of women who are losing weight using synthetic means. Yes, I’m talking about weight-loss jabs – Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Saxenda et al – which, while originally developed and prescribed as a treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes, have swiftly surged in popularity among civilians. An increasing number of Brits are buying these injections privately (at a whopping cost of around £200 a month), with 5 per cent of the population currently using them and 9 per cent reporting they know someone who uses them, according to Ipsos. One in five Britons have said they would use a weight-loss drug if it was free on the NHS.
As the numbers have grown, so the stigma has shrunk and the notion has become mainstream; at least four people I know have spoken openly about getting injections in the last six months. In this sphere, admitting that I’m on a diet feels somehow even more mortifying – like something quaint and old-fashioned, practically retro at this point. “Why would you bother with all that?”, seems the unspoken question hovering in the air. (Well, it’s not setting me back £2,400 a year, is my unspoken answer.)
I’m not here to cast judgement on jabs, nor on anyone else’s life choices. We’re all on our own quest to be happy and healthy, and people have to find what works for them. It just strikes me as somewhat off-kilter that we’ve normalised injecting our bodies with regular appetite suppressants yet demonised the act of following a balanced, nutrient-packed “diet”, purely because the word “diet” has developed such negative connotations.
Beneath this complex web of narratives around eating and our bodies lies an uncomfortable truth: we still have a serious health problem in this country. In England, more than a quarter of the population (26.2 per cent) is estimated to be clinically obese, according to government figures published last year. Throw in those of us who are overweight, and the number leaps up to 64 per cent. There has been an upward trend in both categories; the proportion of obese Brits has risen by 3.6 per cent in the last decade. We can be positive about our bodies all we like, but it doesn’t change the serious health implications inherent in obesity: it’s associated with reduced life expectancy and is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, liver, and respiratory disease, and can also impact on mental health.
It is incredibly challenging to navigate all of these often conflicting issues as a woman (or just as a human, in fact). Trying to find the middle ground is a constant tightrope act: to take care of our bodies by feeding them properly with the right things, while not punishing ourselves and becoming obsessed; to strive for better physical and mental health, while attempting to accept ourselves compassionately without constantly focusing on the negatives.
Though I may feel ashamed to use the word “diet”, I don’t feel ashamed of the change in how I feel about myself. Far from being fuelled by self-hatred, this latest health kick has been the most profound act of self-love – one that has seen me nourish and care for my body, pouring into it my time and attention, for maybe the first time in my adult life.
Dieting isn’t necessarily the answer, but it might not always be the enemy either.
For anyone struggling with the issues raised in this article, eating disorder charity Beat’s helpline is available 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677. NCFED offers information, resources and counselling for those suffering from eating disorders, as well as their support networks. Visit eating-disorders.org.uk or call 0845 838 2040
