Is It Diet Culture or Intuitive Eating? The Diet Soda Dilemma
A question I get asked often when I’m supporting folks to heal their relationship with food is, “Am I being restrictive if I choose to drink diet soda?” (or any other “diet” or healthified version of a food for that matter).
The question is positioned as closed one, where the answer is a simple “yes” or “no.” Except that, the answer isn’t a simple “yes” or “no.” That’s because the food itself is not what makes the decision restrictive or not, it’s the motivation behind the decision.
I’m going to explain what I mean, but first, let’s back up and start with some necessary background and definitions.
Diet Culture & Intuitive Eating Defined
Diet culture is a belief system that idealizes thinness, conflates thinness with health, and attaches morality and virtue to body size and the performance of perceived health behaviors (like eating fruits and vegetables and engaging in physical activity). From this comes beliefs that only thin bodies can be healthy bodies, that pursing health is a moral imperative, and that a person’s worth is inextricably linked to the food (and exercise) choices they make.
Diet culture is so deeply entrenched in Western society that many of us become very invested in it without even realizing it. Oftentimes, before we are even able to consent! Being put on their first diet before they were double digits in age is not an uncommon story among my clients.
But at some point, many of us also start to recognize how problematic this system of beliefs is. How it’s never delivered on its promises or taken us where we wanted to go. And now instead, it just leaves us feeling more lost than ever when it comes to all things food, eating, weight, and health.
This is the point at which my clients usually enter into my orbit. They know that diets don’t work but they also have no idea how to feed themselves and every ounce of trust that they are capable of figuring it out has been eroded. My job is helping them to heal by rebuilding body trust and self-confidence.
A framework that informs much of how I approach this work is Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating is described by its creators, dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, as a self-care framework for nourishment. It’s a non-diet approach to food that re-positions feeding ourselves as an act of kindness and respect toward our body rather than a means to control it. And it empowers individuals to be their own authorities on their bodies and their food decisions.
Intuitive Eating offers a supportive framework, consisting of 10 principles, to guide you in rejecting diet culture and finding your way back to your body. But it won’t provide you with rules or a set of do’s and don’ts when it comes to what to eat.
The principles include: Reject the Diet Mentality, Honor Your Hunger, Make Peace with Food, Challenge to Food Police, Discover the Satisfaction Factor, Feel Your Fullness, Cope with Emotions with Kindness, Respect Your Body, Movement — Feel the Difference, and Honor Your Health — Gentle Nutrition.
It’s an inside out approach to healing your relationship to food and body that challenges the dominate narratives diet culture has taught us.
What Does this All Have to Do with Diet Soda?
The first principle of Intuitive Eating is to Reject the Diet Mentality. This is where we start to identify all of the ways in which diet culture has infiltrated our lives and disrupted our experiences with food. Part of this includes identifying how diet culture presents in our food system and how it influences our food choices.
If you are curious how diet culture shows up in your life be sure to check out my FREE Finding Food Freedom Starter Guide.
Dieting is big business. Even if it’s not trendy to call it that anymore, that’s what manipulating our food intake in an effort to manipulate (read: shrink) our body is. And there’s no way the food industry is going to miss out on an opportunity to capitalize on our vulnerabilities to make a buck. So, with diet culture came, and continues to come, a flood of “diet” or low fat, low calorie, high protein, keto, low-carb, sugar-free, diet company-branded, or otherwise healthified food substances.
The target audience for these food substances is people who are participating in diet culture. That does not mean, however, that just by choosing to consume any of these foods that you are participating in diet culture.
A concern, or perhaps point of confusion, for a lot of folks new to pursuing Intuitive Eating is that “if I choose to drink diet soda (or whatever other diet food) am I being restrictive?” And maybe you are, but it doesn’t inherently mean that.
When choosing diet soda is not restrictive.
- You prefer the taste.
- You are indifferent to the difference in taste between diet and regular and being mindful of sugar intake feels important to you.
- You experience diabetes or insulin resistance and the diet option feels more compatible with your health goals. (Please note, this is not to say that you should be choosing diet soda if you experience these things, either.)
- You are having lunch with your mom and you just don’t have the energy to deal with her commentary on the “evils of sugar” if you were to choose regular soda. You know it’s a totally acceptable choice, though, and also don’t feel deprived not having it.
These are examples of internally motivated decisions. Wherein your decision is based on your preferences, needs, and values as determined by you. Not what the world around you tells you is correct.
When choosing diet soda is restrictive.
- You prefer regular soda but are trying to avoid feeling guilty for consuming “empty calories.”
- You want something sweet but are using diet soda to try and trick yourself out of eating something “bad.”
- You are trying to mask hunger cues by filling your belly with zero-calorie, fizzy liquid.
- You have intense anxiety about consuming regular soda because you fear that it’s going to cause illness.
- You feel like this is the choice you should make, even though it’s not the choice you want to make, because of your body size.
- You’re trying to cut calories to lose weight.
These are examples of externally motivated decisions. This is when we make decisions to please other people, to avoid reprimand, to achieve some external reward or validation, or to avoid feeling guilt or shame.
The Problem with Externally Motivated Decision Making
Diet culture is all about externally motivated decision making. We are driven by trying to meet external calorie and point goals, to achieve a certain number on the scale or jean size, to feel virtuous about our food choices and avoid the guilt and shame that comes with making what diet culture deems to be the “wrong” decision.
And this works to effect behavior change…to a point. But external motivation is generally not helpful for long-term, supportive behavior change. I write all about this on my blog post, Why Your Motivation for New Diets Doesn’t Last.
Intuitive Eating Fosters Making Internally Motivated Decisions
Again, these are activities or behaviors we engage with because they feel important to us, regardless of what the world around us tells us we should be doing! We see the inherent value in them or they align with our personal preferences, values, and goals.
They are not based in fear. Or avoidance of guilt. Or trying to “be good” and follow the rules.
Intuitive Eating does not assign a value judgment to any foods. There are not “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong” choices. Instead, this framework supports us in being able to figure out what works for us, as individual humans with different needs, preferences, goals, and access, in an individual moment in time.
It is nuanced, though.
“Am I being restrictive if I choose to drink diet soda?”
The true answer is: It depends. So, when my clients ask me this question, I always want to know more. And, I always answer their question with many more questions so that we can discover the true answer together and then decide what to do from there.
All to say, drinking diet soda, or consuming any other food product created in the image of diet culture on its own does not mean you are being inherently restrictive. It just doesn’t mean you’re definitely not, either.
It’s also worth adding how a history of chronic dieting, disordered eating, or an eating disorder can confuse the situation further. I couldn’t count the number of times a client of mine was convinced they were choosing a certain light, low-cal, or healthified food because it was honestly their preference only to realize in recovery that this really wasn’t true. So yeah, it can get complicated.
But help is available! My nutrition practice, ThrivInspired Nutrition, helps folks sort through all the confusion and nuance of building a healthier relationship with food with courses, support groups, and individual sessions. Check out our resources here: www.thrivinspirednutrition.com.
