#341: Bad Diet Advice Really Isn't About the Diet

Made For Living Well

If you're breathing, it's assumed you've been exposed to bad diet advice.

Growing up in the '80s and '90s, I lived through what some consider the peak of 'crazy diet advice.' From cabbage soup to grapefruit diets and liquid fasts, the '90s were anything short of one wild idea to the next that might help someone achieve their desired outcomes.

Bad diet advice didn't just emerge in the last few decades; history proves it has been circulating throughout different millenniums. It's part of our history and still part of our culture.

Yet, under the surface, there is more to dieting than meets the eye. It may feel like an approach to reach a better destination, whether through weight loss or another metric, but dieting creates a sense of safety, no matter how artificial it may be.

It feels strange to combine dieting and safety—even contradictory. But if you dig deeper, you'll find that people seek diets to create order in what feels chaotic or dysregulated. They seek a system that provides safety when they don't feel safe.

Safety is a human need (not a wish), and diets provide just enough safety to keep people needing them.

In the podcast, I share a shift in understanding diet culture. I also share where it's led us astray and how to use it to better your life. Bad diet advice is only bad because we misunderstand what we need. This is different from your average conversation about bad diet advice. It's deeper and yet more profound.

Listen to the podcast to understand the full story.

Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/341.

Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school

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