- Supatra Tovar is a psychologist, dietitian, and pilates instructor who used to follow fad diets.
- She learned that strict diets don’t work, so made small changes to enjoy eating nutritious food.
- These include changing her social media feed, eating slowly, and not giving up carbs.
In her late 20s and early 30s, Supatra Tovar followed fad diets, from South Beach to Atkins, which she couldn’t stick to.
When she started her Master’s degree in nutritional science, it set alarm bells ringing over the state of her diet.
Tovar quit her job as a pilates teacher in California to take the course after she noticed her clients felt social pressure to eat less to achieve the “right” body shape. She felt a duty to educate herself to help her students, she told Business Insider.
Our mindset plays a key role in what we eat, she learned, which motivated her to do a doctorate in clinical psychology. She has now been a qualified clinical psychologist for five years and a registered dietitian for 10.
Supatra Tovar
“I realized fad diets just don’t work,” she said. “They are designed to give us false hope that they might actually work in order to get our money.”
Her training taught her how to eat nutritious food and maintain a healthy weight.
At 52, she can “really love and enjoy food” and has never felt better about herself, she said.
Tovar is part of a wave of people ditching fad diets that give unsustainable results. Consuming enough protein and mindful eating are more popular today, according to a 2024 report by the International Food Information Council.
Tovar shared some of the changes she made to unlearn diet culture with Business Insider.
Unfollow social media accounts that make you feel bad about yourself
Supatra Tovar
“First, you have to depopulate your social media feed from all of the content that is designed to make you feel terrible about yourself. And then repopulate it with stuff that makes you feel good,” she said. “For me, that’s puppies and kittens and Kevin Bacon singing to his goats on his farm.”
In a 2023 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers, 226 participants, aged 18 to 40, completed an online survey that suggested viewing pictures of people who fit stereotypical beauty standards on Instagram was linked to a lower mood and dissatisfaction with their bodies.
Anchor new habits to old ones
People often think they have to take drastic action to change their lives, Tovar said. But small changes to our behavior can make a big difference, because they are sustainable.
Tovar recommended adding a new habit to an existing “anchoring behavior.” For example, she made her daily coffee an “anchor” for 20 minutes of exercise.
This chimes with what clinical psychologist Kimberly M. Daniels previously told BI: making one or two small changes to your diet at a time is less overwhelming and, therefore, more sustainable than adopting an entirely new one.
Eat slowly
“It takes about 20 minutes for the brain to register the presence of food in our stomach,” Tovar said.
Eating slower at mealtimes can allow you to monitor how full you are, so you don’t over or undereat, she said.
Sitting with others can also help because eating communally encourages us to have conversations and eat more slowly, she said. Another tip is to take a break during a meal for a few minutes to see if you’re still hungry.
Don’t vilify foods — especially carbohydrates
Diet culture labels certain foods as “unhealthy,” so people can feel guilty when they eat them. But feeling as though you are being denied foods you enjoy can make it harder to follow a nutritious diet long-term.
Carbohydrates, in particular, are commonly vilified as fattening when they are actually “our best friend,” she said.
Carbs are our brains’ preferred energy source, and aren’t any more fattening than other micronutrients (fat and protein). Fat loss comes from eating fewer calories without needing to cut out an entire group of micronutrients.
“Your body absolutely adores natural carbohydrates — fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, legumes, all of them,” Tovar said.
