Study finds women spend 15 years of their lifetime dieting

It's doing our mental health no favours

The food choices we're making are impacting more than just our weight. Image: Pexels

With harmful mental health impacts and low rates of success, the latest study on dieting reveals that the practice is doing little more than weighing Australian women down.

Australian women spend nearly 15 years of their lives dieting over the course of their lifetime, a new report from Juniper reveals today. 

The figure reflects the harrowing reality of Australia's failing dieting culture, one that most women are sadly all too familiar with.

Titled The True Cost of Diet Culture, the report revealed several startling correlations between dieting and the condition of the participant’s mental health. 

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The report found 19 per cent of Australian women spend between three and eight hours every week confronted with thoughts about weight loss. 

Over a third of the total women surveyed, reported feeling negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, stress, and sadness when it came to their dieting experiences.

What’s even more startling, is that 35 per cent of the study’s participants consider their last dieting pursuit to be a failure. 

The findings suggest that the ever-growing mountain of weight loss programs, regimes, and ‘solutions’ out on the market today, are simply not designed to generate successful results. 

Why it’s time to ditch diet culture

Almost one million Australian women were found to be permanently on a diet or practising restrictive eating to lose weight. So why are successful results seemingly so hard to come by?

Dr Ramy Bishay, Endocrinologist and director of the Endocrine & Metabolic Clinic at the Ashley Centre in Westmead, says the rapidly growing prevalence of obesity and other serious chronic health conditions is largely to blame for our failing approach to dieting.

What diet trends and food fads have you tried? Image: Getty

“We simply can’t expect women to undo thousands of years of adaptation to starvation, which has dominated human history, in a matter of weeks or months by ‘eating less and moving more’,” Bishay says. 

“So much time and headspace are taken up by dieting and perceived quick fixes when obesity is a medical condition that requires professional support and medical intervention.”

According to the study, obesity cases in Australia have almost doubled in the last decade alone. Now affecting two in three Australians, the numbers reflect a harrowing health crisis. 

“Far too often obesity is considered a lifestyle condition, but this report demonstrates that the ‘eat less, move more’ mantra is failing Australian women,” Bishay says.

Passing down our bad habits

We’ve all watched our mothers pinch their waists in front of the mirror, sighing in frustration at the silhouette staring back.

We’ve all refused a slice of birthday cake in the office kitchen, or at the very least asked for ‘just a small one’. 

And we’ve all filled our shopping carts, fridge doors and stomachs with low-fat, sugar-free promises. 

New data reveals dieting habits may begin earlier than we thought. Image: Getty

Though we’re all aware it shouldn’t be, dieting appears to be a largely accepted part of what it means to be a woman. It’s also one that seems to follow us through every decade.

Among the women who reported having tried restricting food to lose weight, a quarter of them first began dieting as a minor. In fact, 15 per cent were found to have started at the age of 15 years. 

Gen Zers were not only the generation reported to be most likely to have started dieting as minors, but also as the most likely to experience negative emotions throughout their weight loss pursuit, such as anxiety, depression and overwhelm. 

With stats like these reaffirming the negative influence dieting can have on us, perhaps it’s time to ditch the expired and archaic practices that seem to only be weighing us down. 

Originally published as Study finds women spend 15 years of their lifetime dieting