What is Diet Culture?
In my years of working with eating disorders as an Intuitive Eating counselor, I have become hyper aware of Diet Culture (DC), I see it for what it is, and I am able to be in better control of how it affects me. All my life I perceived the messages from DC to be normal. I didn’t give it a second thought, that’s just the way the world is. We should all aim to be skinny. Make your body smaller. Try harder. Eat less. Exercise more. Be unsatisfied with the body you have. Change yourself. Avoid carbs (or fat, or sugar, or processed foods, or gluten etc.).
The truth is, this is an industry. It is a business that thrives off telling people they are not good enough. If you look closely at DC, it is promoting disordered eating behaviors and creating full blown eating disorders in many women and men. There is not a big difference between diet behaviors and eating disorder behaviors, which is why dieting should not be viewed as harmless, but something that can be dangerous. If someone who is considered “underweight” tracks their food and counts calories, some might think of it as obsessive or an issue, yet we encourage this behavior in those who are “overweight”. If someone who is thin eats only half their plate, we are worried they aren’t eating enough. Yet we urge those in larger bodies to do just that. If a thin person restricts whole food groups from their diet, it’s a disordered behavior. Yet this is exactly what a diet tells us to do.
Health care practitioners have been encouraging disordered eating behaviors in “overweight” individuals for decades and continue to do so. DC and weight stigma are so saturated in our health care system that no one dares question it.
Dieting does not work. If it did, then how would the industry continue to thrive like it has? Chances are if you have tried a diet and lost weight, you probably gained it all back (around 95% of people do), likely re-gaining even more. It is set up for you to fail and to make you feel like it is your fault. You just need to have more discipline, right? Wrong! It is impossible for most diets to be a sustainable way to eat or live forever. Yes, you may lose weight initially, and that can feel amazing, like an adrenaline high, getting complemented by friends and family. But then…. your physiological response to deprivation will begin to kick in, with cravings, the feeling of losing control, obsessive thoughts about food, and binges, ultimately leaving you feeling defeated. You regain the weight. You feel like a failure. But that initial feeling of bliss keeps us coming back for more! People defend diets- claiming that it worked for them (did it, though?) and are willing to give it another try, hopeful this time they can stick to it. It’s a harmful cycle that contributes to weight cycling, which is more harmful to our health than being “overweight”.
Opening your eyes to DC is a big step in ditching the diet mentality. Start to see it for the multi-billion dollar industry that it is and commit to not contributing another dollar towards it. Start to pay attention to food rules you follow- where did they come from? Is there any science behind it? Start to question your food choices- why am I choosing this food? Do I enjoy this? Is it satisfying? What do I really want to be eating?
I encourage you to look out for DC language such as ‘summer body’, ‘ideal weight’, ‘thinspiration’, ‘guilt-free’, ‘Whole-30 approved’, ‘paleo approved’, ‘keto approved’, etc. Try to eliminate it from your vocabulary. Try not to comment on your body or others bodies (praising weight loss or thinness or putting down fat bodies). Try not to comment on food choices (feeling guilty, being bad or good). It is amazing once you are aware of it just how present and normal this language and dialogue is in our culture.
Learning to trust our bodies again is difficult because DC has been telling us not to for so long. We have tricked ourselves into thinking we are not hungry. We have ignored hunger signals. We eat foods we do not actually want because we have been told what not to eat. We have taken the pleasure out of eating and replaced it with stress, guilt and shame. You may not trust your body, and it may not trust you either. The process in regaining this trust is different for everyone, but once you do, the freedom from DC will feel so liberating.
Dianna