What is Diet Culture?
What exactly is “Diet Culture?”
Christy Harrison, an advocate for anti-diet and weight inclusivity, is quoted often by her thorough yet articulate definition of diet culture.
"Diet culture is a system of beliefs that:
Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you’re irreparably broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin “ideal.”
Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, which means you feel compelled to spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money trying to shrink your body, even though the research is very clear that almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years.
Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power.
Oppresses people who don't match up with its supposed picture of “health,” which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health.”
Diet culture is all around us and embedded in our culture. Diet culture demonizes one type of eating, living, and body size while elevating another. Whether subtle or overt in how it shows itself, it is in our lives whether we like it or not.
Diet culture examples IRL (In Real Life):
-Exercise framed as punishment for eating certain foods or to prepare for certain seasons
-Pressure for new moms of how quickly they “get their pre-baby body back”
-Strangers making comments about weight changes
-Magazine covers discussing weight shifts of celebrity’s or how to get x type of body
-Pressure on new brides to lose weight for the big day
-People In larger bodies not having accessible and comfortable chairs in public spaces
-Insurance companies not allowing procedures unless you’re a certain BMI
-commercials on the radio for weight loss
-YouTube videos showing “what I ate in a day videos”
-Influencers shaming certain ways of eating or certain foods while elevating another way of eating
-food described or marketed as “clean” or “guilt-free”
Sadly, I could go on...
The diet industry in the U.S. is worth $72 billion. This is a money making machine, thats job is to make you believe you need it; that you and your body cannot be trusted without it. Diet culture sucks you in and throws you out making you feel like you’re a failure; which, in all actuality, it is the diets itself that fail. Diets don’t work; truly. 95% of diets fail. However, diet culture, makes you believe you’re a failure, and sucks you and your time, money, efforts into the next, latest and greatest diet. This is how the diet cycle begins and perpetuates. Can you relate? Have you been there?
So, once you know what diet culture is, and how much it is not serving you #dietculturedropout - how do you begin the principle of rejecting diet mentality? Here are a few of my tips to begin working towards that process:
Begin acknowledging diet culture and how it shows up all over your life. Be aware of how diet culture makes you feel. It is completely valid to get angry about all the sneaky ways diet culture has shown up in your life.
Do a clean-sweep of your social media feeds; eliminating all of the users who perpetuate diet culture. Begin adding in more body positive, anti-diet culture users. For a full list of my favorite accounts, click here.
Eliminate sources of diet culture in your life - stop subscribing to that magazine that promotes diets on its cover, listening to the news featuring a latest diet trend, etc. Reject it!
Find a dietitian to work with who takes the ‘diet’ out of their work. Tory Stroker, identifies as a non-diet dietitian, meaning she practice dietetics with the rejection of diet culture messages and beliefs in mind, and help her clients work through that process as well.
At what point will you become fed up with diet culture?
If you’re ready to ditch diet culture for good and looking for an anti-diet approach to wellness, book a free 15-minute discovery call with me, today to chat about how we can help support you in this process.
