No, when I say shackles, I really mean it because the chokehold that diet culture has had (and continues to have) on us is wild. For those unfamiliar with what diet culture is, it’s basically the idea and belief that how you look (body appearance & shape) is more important than your overall physical and psychological well-being. It’s in the idea that health and fitness looks a certain way (usually thin) and that restricting what you eat is normal. Diet culture also assigns morality to food which is quite outrageous labelling certain foods as good and others as bad while simultaneously empowering the way of thinking that our relationships with food should be transactional -food being something you earn or deserve depending on how much you’ve worked out or restricted yourself.
I really feel like diet culture is so ingrained in our culture that we don’t even realize it’s there. It’s in the sugar-free, clean eating, cleanse, before & after pictures glorifying weight loss, the flat-tummy teas, the detoxes and restrictive eating, in the thinner = healthy. And while we may be moving away from the term diet-culture it’s now disguised itself as ‘wellness’ with the depictions of the ‘that girl’ ‘it girls’ and ‘clean girl’ aesthetics and we’re still being sold the narrative that we need to look and eat a certain way to be healthy and well taking away the joy from body movement and undermining the adequacy and variety of food. The more predominant face of physical wellness culture that’s sold to us is quite performative, privileged, and aspirational in a really weird way. It’s still about being thinner but we just don’t say it out loud anymore.
Before I go on, I just want to remind you that it’s okay if you still want to lose weight, and it’s okay if you still want to hop on a diet.
What I want to touch on specifically today is the relationship between diet culture and disordered eating & our body image. Diet culture has fostered this environment where food restriction is normalized and celebrated and working out is seen and used as a way to earn food, work off ‘bad’ foods and ultimately lose weight. Dieting involves restriction and strict limitations of what is and isn’t allowed which causes us to miss out on the spectrum of variety in foods & nutrients gained from said foods. This deprivation of certain foods also often causes bingeing once you’re ‘allowed’ to eat normally again or even binge-eating during the diet which leads to feelings of shame and guilt which increase disordered eating patterns. Check out these differences between intuitive eating & disordered eating.
Intuitive Eating | Disordered Eating |
No guilt or shame around food & body movement | Guilt & shame associated with eating |
Eating choices based on hunger, fullness & satisfaction | Ignores internal food regulating cues in favor of external ones |
Allows for flexibility and variety of healthy & fun foods | Strict rules, routines & rituals around food (good vs bad) and eating |
Moves body for enjoyment & health (which looks different for everyone) | Moves body mainly for weight loss & aesthetic aspirations (more negative body image) |
Emotions are not regulated through food | Fear, anxiety & worry around food |
Eats mindfully with intention | Diet & wellness trends on restriction |
On the other hand, diet culture creates and sends the harmful message that body types outside a specified, narrow range are unhealthy. Now of course sometimes losing weight can be a healthy choice, but often the methods used to lose the weight are often quite unhealthy & restrictive. The media is riddled with glamorized imagery of celebrities and other people losing weight without looking at whether the weight loss was sustainable or even healthy. I mean even look at how glamorized quick weight loss after child birth is, so much so that people were actually pressed that Rihanna didn’t immediately snap back & lose the baby weight and is instead choosing to embrace her mom-bod. This further reinforces the idea that thinness and the pursuit of weight loss is how we gain acceptance, happiness and health. Letting go of diet culture is saying that appearance doesn’t give a comprehensive picture of an individual’s health and that health doesn’t just look like being thin.
Instagram: @mynameisjessamyn & @superfithero
So what if we start to eat more intuitively and less restrictively? What if we pursued health rather than weight loss and enjoyed the variety of different foods more mindfully? What if we ate and moved our bodies in the pursuit of a better mood, better energy and better digestion and not to merely shrink our bodies? How would that translate to how compassionate and loving we can be with our bodies? How much more would our relationships with our bodies improve?