What is diet culture?
“What is diet culture?!” I hear you ask…well, we live in it all day every day.
For me, it has presented itself as the over-riding feeling that we should all be chasing the thin-ideal (or whatever body shape is in fashion at the moment, I’m looking at you Kim K).
Diet culture teaches people that a thin body shape is equal to health and moral virtue, when in fact we all know that is total BS. It leads to people endlessly chasing a perfect body shape and making them feel like crap when they cannot achieve it without resorting to overly restrictive diets or spending hours in the gym. It also leads some people to take drastic measures to adapt and change their body with surgery or quick fixes.
People who have successfully lost weight are praised, but people who choose to be happy with their body are stigmatised as lazy or unhealthy. There is scientific evidence to prove that diets do not work in the long term, with most dieters regaining their weight over time. The diet and fitness industry is making money on every failed attempt.
Diet culture also creates a culture of oppression in society - the people who are disproportionately affected by this are women, trans folk, people in larger bodies, people of colour and people living with disabilities. It can be very damaging for people’s physical and mental health.
Diet culture has made us all hyper-aware of ‘health’ in general - have you ever felt ashamed of making a certain food choice? Have you boiled down food to just calories and macros? Are you obsessed with your Fitbit stats? Do you meticulously record what you eat? I’ve done all that, I wasted so much time weighing lettuce.
Food is more than just calories - it brings us joy! That delicious first bite of an amazing burger, a beautiful fresh salad with new season asparagus, a warming bowl of homemade soup with crusty bread, the garlic mayo laced chicken kebab after a night out with your friends. Food is life, if we didn’t get excited by it then we would die out as a species.
In addition, exercise isn’t just a tool to lose weight! Exercise brings so many wonderful benefits - improved strength, better sleep patterns, a sense of achievement, body appreciation and self-esteem. Learning to enjoy movement will bring you all these benefits, have you ever ignored all these wonderful side effects simply because you didn’t lose weight?
My aim is to help you have a better relationship with exercise, food and your own body image so you can live more intuitively without the confines of diet culture!