The TikTok Diet

Take it from someone who has tried them all.

Intermittent fasting, 10-day ab challenges, metabolism boosters. I’ll save you the trouble of eating only eggs for a week: dieting tricks don’t work––especially tips given to you by 15-year-olds on TikTok.

It was only a few months ago that TikTok users began abandoning comedy videos in favor of those that showed close-ups of their stomachs. Then came the videos of these same users showing us not only what they look like, but how to look like them. 

So I deleted the app.

Or, that’s what I wish I’d done. Instead, I unintentionally subscribed to this category of TikToks by allowing the algorithm to curate a feed of similar videos. I spent hours watching and comparing myself to an infinite scroll of girls who looked like the female form of The David. They told me to eat salads with no croutons, cheese or ranch, so I ate salads with no croutons, cheese or ranch. They told me it was easy to get a snatched waist if I didn’t eat after 7pm or before 11am, so I didn’t eat after 7pm or before 11 am. It was like playing Simon Says, only Simon was a skinny teenager promoting unhealthy eating habits.

I was tired. I was hungry. But more importantly, I was bored. I kept watching because though it was ugly and mentally damaging, I just couldn’t look away. Until finally, after weeks of trying weird diets and workouts, I decided I could.

So I deleted the app. For real this time. 

And it wasn’t just me. First-year Isabelle Kenagy also deleted TikTok after her For You page was taken over by what she describes as “fake health science.”

“I looked at one or two recipes and then my entire feed––my entire For You Page–– was all recipes and workouts. It wasn’t like normal healthy stuff, it was like really really skinny Instagram models being like, ‘How You can get My Body.’ ”

The more Kenagy watched these workout and dieting videos, the more her feed would inch towards content about eating disorders. She says her feed quickly transitioned from “How I Lost 10 lbs” to a girl taking laxatives, implying that she was purging. 

But TikTok users didn’t stop at the whisper of eating disorders. Kenagy watched videos captioned #ana (referring to anorexia) and others that used the sound “Eating Disorder Check.” 

What’s most disturbing about this trend is that it infiltrates users’ feeds without their knowledge. Kenagy wasn’t looking to watch videos glorifying eating disorders, just as I wasn’t trying to spiral into diet culture. Yet because of the way TikTok’s algorithm is constructed, giving a view to a health shake or an ab workout video inadvertently led us to anorexia content. 

TikTok is not explicit about the mechanics of their algorithm, but the description from the app store reads, “all you have to do is watch, engage with what you like, skip what you don’t, and you’ll find an endless stream of short videos that feel personalized just for you.” The key is that it’s not the videos that you “like,” but the videos that you engage with that determine your personalized feed. Giving a few misplaced views to health-related videos can lead you into a trap of infinite TikToks about dieting and eating disorders. 

I tried to break the algorithm, but it wasn’t easy. It took me an hour of marking “Not Interested” to a slew of diet videos before my For You page reverted back to homeostasis: a never-ending loop of people dancing to Savage by Megan Thee Stallion. 

First-year Ejun Kim was not so lucky with transforming her feed. She says it was full of restricted eating suggestions and girls listing their measurements. Kim was diagnosed with an eating disorder this past summer and says she was beginning to feel a lot better. That is, of course, until stay-at-home orders began and she had much more time to scroll through TikTok. 

“I’m reverting back to the mindset when I was really deep in the trenches [of an eating disorder],” Kim said. “When the girls are dancing, I won’t even be looking at the dance, I’ll be looking at the way their body moves.” 

Nicole Bentley, a Chicago-based therapist specialized in eating disorders, says that this extensive exposure to one specific body type and messaging about how to achieve it is particularly dangerous during stay-at-home orders. There’s less accountability without the structure of a school day, fewer real social connections, and higher susceptibility to depression and anxiety, which robs viewers of mental resources needed to combat these messages.

Bentley explains that because of the fun and casual manner of the app, users don’t have the critical mindset needed to realize when watching becomes harmful. The overt repetition of this singular body type is validating: “it can develop into something called a core belief. ‘I do believe that skinny is better.’ ‘I do believe that I am too big, I can’t be happy at this weight.’ Or, ‘I do believe that dieting is the only way to get the body I want to then be happy,’ ” she says.

This shame cycle is what leads to the seemingly absurd: 123.9K likes on a video promoting a diet of only eggs. But desperate viewers will try anything if you put a skinny person in front of it, despite that there is no basis in fact. Trust me, I would know.

Much of this desperation stems from TikTok’s representation problem. Any user can perpetually scroll through videos of very thin girls in little clothing, but never see someone their own size. Amongst a sea of girls dancing in bikinis and planking in sports bras (TikTok influencers included), Lizzo’s video in a swimsuit was immediately taken down. Lizzo is no timid, subsidiary star, however. She was quick to insinuate on Twitter that it was removed because of her size, telling TikTok, “we need to talk.” 

Eventually, TikTok put Lizzo’s video back up after an onslaught of backlash, but the For You page’s body diversity did not increase. I, too, woke up to the infamous “This Violates Our Community Guidelines” in place of a video I posted dancing in a swimsuit, a move I’m sure made my 10 followers feel much safer on the app. TikTok hasn’t released how (or who) decides what videos to take down, but I have to wonder why Lizzo’s and my body don’t belong in the “Community,” but Charli D’Amelio’s does. 

I’m in a place now where I can ignore the body-shaming algorithm and zoom out from the small world of dieting on TikTok. But there are so many users who aren’t yet in that place, and others who are heading down a more dangerous path because they can’t escape this overwhelming space of models and those trying to become them. 

TikTok is responsible for entertaining the dredging up of dieting fads and eating disorder trends that had all but disappeared from the mainstream social media sphere. While Instagram and other platforms were improving in terms of body positivity, Kim says that TikTok diet culture “feels like a really big interruption to our progress.” 

If the company is serious about no longer being the epicenter of anorexia promotion and diet culture, it must fix the susceptibility of its algorithm and aggressively target pro-eating disorder content. More specifically, it must allow its visible “Community” to be diverse, balanced, and inclusive of everyone with an account, not just everyone with a 24” waist.