Rihanna, I'm curious, what are the top most toxic diet trends that you're seeing right now?
Optavia. We could have an entire podcast episode about it, but I'll just say there's nothing ethical about having people temporarily mimic eating disorder behaviors to lose weight. That is glorified anorexia, and you're paying a lot of money for it when that's something that could be done for free (although I do not recommend).
Clean eating, I would say, is a really toxic diet trend because a lot of people don't realize that it is a diet. It's not really based in any truth, you know? What is dirty eating or what is clean eating? The diets that really parade themselves as lifestyle changes are the most dangerous because they carry all the risk, if not more, of an actual diet. But you're essentially being gaslit into believing that you're not dieting. And that's the tea.
Noom is also a diet. Here’s the thing, diet culture is not stupid -they know how to make a buck. The best way to convince people to spend money is to tell them it’s not a diet. So, Noom tells people that they are “not a diet” and just go into the psychological processes of how you eat.
Weight Watchers. If you look, you’ll see that the former CEO of Weight Watchers has been documented saying that their money comes from repeat customers. They want people to come back.
To hear more about how harmful these diet trends are and how to move away from disordered eating, listen to our interview with Rihanna Teixeira here.