The Dangerous Link Between Self-Awareness and Dieting for Women

A consistent message to young women is that they should figure themselves out first before embarking fully on their personal lives, relationships and professional lives. However, this message never seems to apply to young men.

The end result is that women feel compelled to sort through their own experiences, thoughts and feelings with the nagging doubt that they will never figure out who they are. And there is no clear endpoint at which someone knows they have reached this goal. Instead, the target always remains in the distance, just out of reach. The experience of searching for the elusive moment of self-awareness leaves women stuck in failure.

Although this message is intended to empower women, in the end it has the impact of diminishing confidence and delaying gratification. If one is always striving for an unattainable goal, then one can never be fully empowered to go after the important things in life.

Interestingly, the effect of this counterproductive message is to reinforce the power and lure of dieting and weight loss. For a cohort of women undermined by an inherent sense of failure, dieting appears to present a way out. Obsessively dieting and trying to maintain a low weight leads to an immediate, if brief, sense of accomplishment. The goal of weight loss engenders a wave of accolades and approval from men and women. It highlights the empty achievement of weight loss while distracting from the real life achievements that merit attention. And since diets never work, it fuels the cycle of endless dieting.

If women spend their energy on weight loss, they have much less time to focus on other aspects of life.

The underlying message is a myth. Women, just like men, have a right to go after professional and personal achievements without reaching the holy grail of self-awareness. No man is ever told to avoid relationships because he hasn’t figured himself out yet, and no man would decide not to pursue a promotion or a raise while finding himself.

As must as this soul searching made sense for women collectively trying to understand their place in a new world of opportunity after the feminist movement’s achievements in the 70’s, it’s important not to mix up steps forward with needless psychological obstacles.

If society presents immovable psychological hurdles, they stem from a fear of moving forward. But the idea of reaching psychological peace before moving ahead in life is not beneficial. It only reinforces the need for other salves, like dieting, rather than helping women achieve their life goals now.