{"id":42375,"date":"2018-02-22T05:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42375"},"modified":"2018-02-21T14:47:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T19:47:38","slug":"dieting-and-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/02\/22\/dieting-and-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Dieting and mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaitlin Ugolik<\/a> discusses her own recent experience of trying a new diet:<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t often discuss the mental impact of restrictive diets like Whole30 (no \u201cinflammatory\u201d foods), keto (low carb, high fat) or paleo (foods supposedly eaten during the Paleolithic era). People like to tout the weight loss and mood-boosting effects of these diets, but experts say they can push some of us toward disordered eating.<\/p>\n

I tried Whole30 this January, and at first I kind of enjoyed it. I tend to get overwhelmed by options and confused about what\u2019s the latest \u201cright\u201d thing to eat for breakfast, so it was nice to have guidelines. It gave me an excuse to make smoothies and try some new dinner recipes, too.<\/p>\n

A few days in, though, I started noticing some disconcerting thoughts. I was reading the labels on everything<\/em> and starting to think of anything that had any kind of processed sugar \u2014 cane sugar, brown rice syrup, anything \u2014 as \u201cbad.\u201d I also noticed that some of Whole 30\u2019s carceral language was starting to stick in my head. Foods are labeled as \u201ccompliant\u201d or \u201cnon-compliant,\u201d for example. Knowing several people who have struggled with eating disorders, I wondered if diets like this, that say you can\u2019t even eat beans or quinoa, might be a gateway to disordered eating for some people. The consensus among the experts I spoke to is that they are.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll weight-loss diets work against learning to eat \u2018normally\u2019 according to appetite cues, which is also called intuitive eating,\u201d said Karen Koenig, a Florida-based social worker who counsels people with eating disorders. \u201cThe more we restrict eating\u2014by food type, weighing food, or by counting calories or fat grams\u2014the more we ignore and override our body\u2019s signals for hunger, satisfaction and fullness.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some people do benefit from restrictive diets because of their choice-limiting nature, like I did at the beginning, many have a hard time not taking it to the extreme. Most people are taking part in these diets as part of some kind of goal, whether it\u2019s to lose weight, clear up their skin, or just feel better. If (and more likely when) it doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s normal for anyone to get frustrated. But for people who are already prone to anxiety and obsessive thinking (*raises hand*) or those who have \u201caddictive personalities,\u201d a detox or diet can actually lead to something much more dangerous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaitlin Ugolik discusses her own recent experience of trying a new diet: We don\u2019t often discuss the mental impact of restrictive diets like Whole30 (no \u201cinflammatory\u201d foods), keto (low carb, high fat) or paleo (foods supposedly eaten during the Paleolithic era). People like to tout the weight loss and mood-boosting effects of these diets, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,66],"tags":[906,139],"class_list":["post-42375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-health-science","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-b1t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42376,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42375\/revisions\/42376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}