When Dieting Backfires: A Qualitative Exploration of Reddit Users’ Emotional and Moral Responses to Setbacks

Dieting is commonly promoted as a means of achieving better health, yet many individuals experience weight regain following restrictive practices. While weight cycling and perceived dieting failure are well-documented, there is limited exploration of how people interpret and communicate these experiences within online communities. The present study asked, "How do Reddit users articulate and negotiate the emotional and moral dimensions of dieting setbacks and perceived failure?" A total of 965 original opening posts from the subreddit r/loseit were collected in May 2025. Following screening and coding, 894 posts were analysed using qualitative content analysis, informed by a biopsychosociocultural framework. Seven overarching categories were generated: Surveillance and Internalisation, Self-Regulation Outside Formal Models, Psychological Toll of Weight Management, Body Image and Identity Conflict, Moralisation of Eating Behaviour, Locus of Control, and Adaptive Reframing. Findings demonstrate how users construct dieting setbacks as not only personal lapses but also moral and identity burdens, situated within communal narratives of accountability and support. Posts revealed the emotional strain of repeated restriction and weight regain, strategies of resistance and disruption, and ambivalent positioning of responsibility between internal and external factors. These insights highlight the psychological and moral complexity of dieting experiences in digital contexts, offering a richer understanding of weight regain that extends beyond biomedical models. This study contributes to critical health psychology by showing how online communities function as key spaces of meaning-making, where personal struggles with weight are negotiated within broader sociocultural contexts of morality, health, and identity.