Does dieting intensify during Spring? Previous research suggests that body dissatisfaction is seasonal and peaks during Summer. Extending these findings to seasonal dieting, we contend that individuals’ apprehensions about heightened Summertime body dissatisfaction motivate Springtime dieting. To detect seasonal dieting, we examined the seasonal frequencies of 69 dieting hashtags within a database of 564 million tweets originating from the United States and spanning eight calendar years (2012–19). In total, we detected 628,355 dieting hashtags. Of these, 30% occurred during Spring, 20% during Autumn/Fall, and 25% during each of Summer and Winter. During Spring, there were ~64,000 additional dieting hashtags compared with Autumn/Fall, and ~32,000 additional hashtags compared with Summer and Winter. Of the nine most common dieting hashtags that together accounted for 96% of the total, all nine peaked during Spring (ps < 0.0001). This Spring-centric pattern was apparent for both appearance-oriented diets (e.g., “atkins” and “weightwatchers”) and ostensibly non-appearance-oriented diets (e.g., “vegan” and “glutenfree”), suggesting that non-appearance-oriented diets might nonetheless be co-opted for appearance-oriented purposes. In conclusion, we found credible evidence that dieting intensifies during Spring. Future research should examine whether eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia also intensify during Spring because dieting is intrinsic to both these conditions.

春季节食会加剧吗？先前的研究表明，对身体的不满是季节性的，并在夏季达到高峰。将这些发现扩展到季节性节食，我们认为个人对夏季身体不满情绪升高的担忧促使春季节食。为了检测季节性节食，我们检查了数据库中 69 个节食标签的季节性频率，该数据库包含来自美国的 5.64 亿条推文，跨越 8 个日历年（2012-19 年）。我们总共检测到 628,355 个节食标签。其中，30% 发生在春季，20% 发生在秋季/秋季，25% 发生在夏季和冬季。在春季，与秋季/秋季相比，增加了约 64,000 个节食主题标签，与夏季和冬季相比，增加了约 32,000 个主题标签。p s < 0.0001)。这种以春季为中心的模式对于以外观为导向的饮食（例如，“atkins”和“weightwatchers”）和表面上不以外观为导向的饮食（例如，“vegan”和“glutenfree”）都很明显，这表明非外观饮食-尽管如此，以外观为导向的目的可能会选择以饮食为导向的饮食。总之，我们发现了可靠的证据表明春季节食会加剧。未来的研究应该检查饮食失调和肌肉畸形是否在春季也会加剧，因为节食是这两种情况所固有的。