Healing from dieting goes beyond quitting that weight loss group. Dietitian Lucy Carey walks through healing from common dieting wounds.

Getting off the dieting hamster wheel is a monumental step towards food freedom and body peace, but you may find that years of restriction and diet culture has left deeper wounds behind.

Whether it’s grief over letting go of an unrealistic body image ideal, lingering food rules you’re finding it hard to let go of, or regret over the times you didn’t fully experience life because you were too busy trying to control food… These things take a bit longer to heal.

But with the right mindset, it’s absolutely possible to heal. Let’s discuss some of the most common wounds.

The shame of past dieting

Often, my clients believe they have ‘ruined’ their metabolism or their fertility or their bone health, and think that they’ll never be able to be properly healthy again. Other times, there is immense regret over the time and energy they spent obsessing over food and their looks, and they feel that they wasted many opportunities to make memories.

Does that sound familiar to you?

These feelings are valid, but they don’t have to define the future.

The truth is, your body is resilient. While dieting may have affected your metabolism, restriction may have stopped your period, etc., your body has an incredible capacity to heal when nourished consistently and lovingly. It’s a long game. It takes time. But the ability of the body to restore itself is incredible!

Similarly, it’s common to view the time you spent dieting as wasted, but anger and regret doesn’t actually serve you. Instead, I find it helpful to see dieting as part of your journey. The lessons you’ve learned from it, that you’re still learning, will carry you into the future with a lot of wisdom, and with the growing ability to be attuned to your body’s needs and resilient in the face of diet talk around you.

Sometimes journaling about the lessons you’ve learned and how they have shaped your current approach to nutrition and health can be helpful. Then celebrate your decision to break free from diet culture – it’s no small feat!

Lingering food rules

Even after rejecting diet culture, old food rules can linger, often in subtle ways. Do you hesitate before eating dessert? Do you feel that you need to have gone to the gym before you can go to a cafe? These remnants of dieting are often so ingrained you don’t even think about them! But they can keep you from fully embracing food freedom, so identifying these rules is essential.

Ask yourself: are there any foods or ways of eating that still make me uncomfortable? Then challenge those beliefs! By now you know that not every thought you have is golden, and some need to be challenged!

If you find that you are avoiding some foods or situations, set yourself a challenge where you will face that fear!

Body image grief

I lot of my clients feel that letting go of dieting means letting go of the dream of achieving a ‘perfect’ body. What I find is really helpful here, is just reminding them that when they were their slimmest, they certainly weren’t their happiest!

Do you think the same is true for you?

Still, they feel grief over letting go of this goal, and grief over the time and energy they spent chasing it as well.

That’s totally normal and it’s important to acknowledge it and have some space to process it. But at the same time, if you can shift your focus from how your body looks to what it can do, you’ll find it much easier to find that elusive happiness.

Setting a non-appearance-related goal can be super helpful. Maybe you want to train for a specific running race, or be able to do a certain yoga pose, or just have enough energy to keep up with your kids. These goals shift your focus from how you look to what you can achieve.

(Ironically, when my clients let go of chasing that ‘ideal’ body, that’s when their stress levels come down and their body size starts to shift to a more natural point!)

Creating a fulfilling life

So what’s next? When you’ve spent so much time and energy on dieting, you can feel a little lost as to what to do now!

What do you actually like to do? It can take a bit of experimenting if you’re not sure! Maybe you want to reconnect with old hobbies, pick up that guitar again, give painting a try, get into the garden, or try your hand at writing a novel. By broadening your horizons, your sense of self-worth will grow and you’ll find that your body isn’t the most important part of your identity any more.

Rediscovering joy in food is also essential. Instead of seeing meals as something to control or calculate, now they are part of a bigger picture. Now they are opportunities for connection and pleasure. Cook your favourite childhood recipe, try out new vegetables and fruit, eat with your loved ones and savour the conversation! Food is meant to nourish not just your body, but your soul as well.

Healing the deeper wounds that dieting has caused is a journey of patience, imperfection, and trial and error! But freedom from dieting is about so much more than what you eat. It’s about reclaiming your life and living it fully.

So take a moment to reflect today. What’s one step you can take to continue your healing journey?