The Diet Graveyard: Where did they all go?
Sometimes the best ideas come to me in the most random places.
I was standing in a Boots queue last week, waiting to pay, minding my own business. And something on the shelf caught my eye.
The branding reminded me of Skinny Tea.
Remember Skinny Tea?
And I thought, where did that go? I haven't seen an influencer flogging it in years.
No one's holding it up in a gym selfie with a discount code in the caption anymore.
It just... disappeared.
Which got me thinking.
Where did all of them go?
I want you to rewind with me for a second.
Back to side fringes and wedge heels. Nightclubs full of smoke. Facebook albums called "Crasher Monday."
A time when diet culture wasn't just loud, it was absolutely everywhere, and nobody was questioning it.
Slimfast shakes. The Special K diet, The Atkins diet, The Dukan diet, which I'm fairly convinced gave half the nation bad breath and a genuine fear of fruit.
The 5:2.
Lighter Life.
The Cambridge Diet.
Activated charcoal.
Flat tummy lollipops that were all over Instagram circa 2018.
If you're nodding your head right now. If you're doing the mental count. If you've tried most of that list and some of it more than once.
I see you.
And I want to say something important before we go any further.
Where have they all gone?
Think about it. If they worked, actually worked, for real, for good, they'd still be around.
We'd still be buying them.
They'd still be everywhere.
But they're not.
They went because they didn't work.
Not for most people.
Not long term.
Not in the way that actually changes anything.
And here's the bit I really want you to hear.
That doesn't say a single thing about you.
Not one thing.
The fact that a diet didn't work for you is not evidence that you are the problem.
It's evidence that the diet was the problem. It was always the diet.
But I also know the feeling.
That pull when something new comes along.
That little flicker of hope. The thought that creaks up quietly, maybe this one. Maybe this time it'll be different.
I know that feeling because I've had it too.
And so has every woman I've ever worked with.
Every time you started a new diet, a part of you was trying.
Showing up.
Wanting something to change.
That's hope.
And hope is not something to be ashamed of.
The problem was never your commitment.
The problem was what you were committing to.
None of those diets ever did.
They never taught you to trust yourself.
They gave you rules instead. Syn values. Points. Calories. Allowed foods and banned foods and cheat days and fresh start Mondays.
They told you exactly what to do, when to do it, and how much of it to have.
And that works.
For a bit.
Until real life happens.
Until you go to a birthday party or have a terrible week at work or find yourself standing in a service station at 2pm absolutely starving and there isn't a Slimfast shake in sight.
And then the rules run out.
And when the rules run out, so do the results.
And then the voice in your head says — see, you can't do it. You never could.
That voice is wrong. That voice has always been wrong.
The fact that you're still reading this tells me something.
A part of you already knows the diets weren't the answer. You're just figuring out what is.
And that's exactly the right place to be.
When you've spent years being told your instincts are wrong, that you can't be trusted around food, that your body needs to be managed and controlled and restricted, it makes complete sense that trusting yourself feels impossible right now.
Of course it does.
That's what years of diet culture does to a person.
But there is another way.
Not a new plan.
Not a new set of rules.
Not another thing to follow and fall off.
Something that's actually the opposite of all of that.
Listening to yourself.
Trusting yourself.
For the first time in probably decades.
This week on Chatting with Cara I'm walking you through the full diet graveyard.
The nostalgia is real.
Some of it will make you wince.
Some of it might make you laugh.
But I promise you'll come out the other side feeling something shift.
Go and have a listen.
Link below or search "Chatting with Cara" where you get your podcasts from.
And if any of this landed for you today, if you recognise yourself in it and you're ready to have a different kind of conversation about food, book a free 30 minute call with me.
No pressure.
Just an honest chat about where you are and whether I can help.
You'll know when the time is right.
Cara
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