Food Rules and Eating Systems - why diets fail

Bronwyn Fletcher
Aug 12
2 min read

Updated: Sep 3

Most women think they fail at weight loss because they can’t stick with a diet long enough to achieve the results they want. But what if the real issue isn’t willpower to diet for longer? What if the real problem is something they can’t see?

What are eating rules

Everyone has rules for eating. Some are simple: savoury over sweet, lunch at 12, dinner at 7. Others are more instructional: finish what’s on your plate, don’t waste food. But beneath these visible rules lives something deeper, a personal, invisible eating system.

An eating system is the internal structure that stores your food rules, so you don’t have to consciously think about them each time. These rules, which often contradict each other, operate below awareness, and get triggered automatically. They are learned from early childhood experiences, family patterns, and role models.

Over time, this system and its rules becomes so familiar, you don’t even notice it operating. That is until you find yourself eating in ways that don’t make sense on the surface. But dig deeper, and patterns start to emerge.

Amy and Monica's stories

Take Amy, who eats family-sized blocks of chocolate to manage fear. Or Monica, who says loneliness disappears after a litre of ice cream. These aren’t just comfort foods. They’re system-driven behaviours that were learned, reinforced, and eventually hard-wired in.

And this is the part that diets always miss. Diets are built on logic: if you do A, followed by B then you will end up at C.

But an eating system doesn’t work that way. It’s not focused on weight loss, they’re built to keep you emotionally safe, not make you lighter. This is why the same pattern keeps repeating.

You can’t fight an eating system with willpower. But you can learn how the system works. When you understand the system, you’ll see it’s not self-sabotage and you can stop blaming yourself.

What is the answer

If you’ve been trapped in the cycle of weight loss and regain, maybe it’s time to stop asking ‘What diet should I try next?’ and replace it with, ‘What is my eating system protecting me from?’