Diet Culture Could Be Holding You Back, Here’s Exactly How…
First off, what is “diet culture?”
Diet culture is a societal system of beliefs, messages, and promoted behaviors that place supreme value on a person’s weight and appearance, rather than a complete picture of health and well-being.
The multi-billion dollar diet industry tells you daily, “You should make your body appear smaller, no matter the cost.” And that cost adds up, my friend! Especially, when you’re chasing an ever-changing “ideal” body type (curvy in all the right places, supermodel-thin, muscular tone, feminine-soft, etc., etc.). 🤪
While diet culture remains focused on appearance, in all reality, a person’s health and well-being is actually determined by NUMEROUS factors including, but not limited to:
functional abilities
physical level of comfort and energy
emotional, mental, and spiritual state of being
physiological workings of the metabolism and other integrative bodily systems (i.e. nervous, endocrine/hormonal, digestive, skeletal, muscular, etc.)
daily habits like sleep, activity, rest, productivity, hydration, nutritional adequacy of intake from food, etc.
management of symptoms or diagnosed disease state
…Just to name a few!
When someone you trust sincerely inquires, “How are you doing?” Your answer is most likely not, “I’m small.” or “I’m toned.” Right?! Instead, your response is comprised of a self-evaluation of your overall health and well-being, from a variety of angles! The limiting core belief of diet culture is that your body’s thinness equates to health status. And that is just simply not the case. 🙅♀️
Diet culture is a barrier to building sustainable healthy habits.
The driving force behind diet culture’s message to morph your body is rooted in guilt and shame. “You don’t have a good body.” “Your body is bad.” “You’ve made it this way so do better with a diet.” Ugh, it’s gross. What an icky, yet unfortunately familiar, manipulation tactic.
Diet culture praises and elevates lean bodies on magazine covers, headlines, and social media, presenting the people in those bodies as morally virtuous.✨ Weight loss is treated like THE ultimate win in our society. You win followers, you win praise, and you’re basically idolized in the skinny hall-of-fame. All the while, DC blatantly shames and ridicules those in larger bodies, deeming them to be unsightly, gross, lazy, or bad.
If your body doesn’t match society’s standards, society protests it should be changed. There is complete ignorance toward the concept of body diversity and genetic predispositions. Bodies do come in all shapes and sizes. Bodies do change over time. A body that increases in size or changes in shape doesn’t always mean that there is something wrong.
No matter the circumstance, shame is never a great long-term motivator for anyone. Body-shaming leads to self-disgust, negative emotions towards food, and a susceptibility to try ANYTHING. 🙃 It’s the ultimate set-up to buy into every last diet gimmick thrown your way.
Most of my clients come to me ready to heal their relationship with food & body after YEARS AND YEARS of severe calorie-restrictive programs, diet pills, overexercising, buying into supplement lines, nasty frozen meal packages, Weight Watcher’s weigh ins, swearing off carbs, the works! Most times, the effort to make one’s body size smaller begins at such an early age (often encouraged by a parental-figure engulfed in diet culture themselves) that it is difficult to even remember life before dieting.
Not once have I encountered a woman with a history of dieting who feels she’s been able to develop sustainable healthy habits on her chronic dieting journey. Instead, she describes her relationship with food & body to be “all or nothing,” extreme, frustrating, and/or confusing. Why? – Because diet culture offers quick fix tactics to shrink the body, not learned behaviors to take good care of and nurture your body. Did you know that research is increasingly revealing that while dieting may cause short-term weight loss for some (in very small amounts), it is ultimately associated with weight gain in the long-term.
Quite interesting, isn’t it? If it looks like a scam, smells like a scam, must be a…🤔
3 Ways to unsubscribe from diet culture + refocus on self-care goals.
If you’re ready to accept that diet culture is NOT actually working in your favor, I want to invite you to unsubscribe. Reject the diet mentality and begin pursuing healthy habits you can carry forth in your life long term. Begin living out habits you can see yourself continuing 5 years from now…10 years from now… and beyond! If that sounds like a breath of the fresh air, here’s 3 ways to get started:
☑️ Unfollow social media accounts, email listings, and other information outlets that make you feel more overwhelmed, confused, and drawn to extremes. If it sounds extreme, it’s probably not very sound nutrition advice. (I know that’s not sexy, but it’s true!) Instead, follow actual nutrition experts – Registered Dietitians, PhD Doctors of Nutrition, and/or Masters of Nutritional Research.
❌ Cut the comparisons! Stop judging your body and your lifestyle against what others are doing. You’re not them and they’re not you, simple as that. There is an individualized element to nutrition and movement and when we ignore that and try to mimic someone else’s daily routine, it’s only a matter of time before you throw in the towel, in search of the next appealing “What I Eat In A Day” video.
👭Seek support and community that align with an intuitive eating approach. Intuitive eating is a self-care eating framework designed to help you overcome your obstacles with food and body and pursue whole-person health outside of dieting. Discover what a healthy balanced relationship with food can actually look like. Feel at peace in your body and intentional about how your care for it. Intuitive eating is positive and empowering…AND it’s evidence-based, backed by over 125 studies to date. 🙌
Join a group of diet culture dropouts for the support you need!
As a Registered Dietitian, it’s my joy to come alongside women who are weary of dieting and READY to heal their relationship with food & body. ♡
If you’re there – ready to embark on your food freedom and better body image journey, why do it alone? Join me and a group of women this summer for “Able Together,” a 12-week high support program to guide you away from diet culture and towards sound nutrition and healthy habits.
Click below to apply today and we’ll start with a FREE 30-minute call. Can’t wait to hear your story and celebrate your new direction! 👏
Sincerely,
Grace Lopez, RD, LD/N, CLC, CPT
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist