What is Diet Culture and why should we all be asking more questions?

Are you tired of being at war with your body, food and eating?

Do you feel like you are on a constant diet or wellness plan? 

During my journey of understanding and healing my relationship with my body, food and eating, I came across a new word that unbeknown to me, I had been participating in most of my adult life.  

That was ‘diet culture’ 

Let's break it down, what does the word ‘Diet’ mean?

“Food and drink regularly provided or consumed”

The word diet has many meanings, the word actually comes from the Greek word “diaita,” which means “way of life.”

There are many variations of this definition and until recently none of them talk about restrictions or elimination yet we identify the word ‘diet’ as something that implies sacrifice, restriction and behaviour changes. 

This is nothing new. ‘Dieting’ as a form of restriction has been around since the ancient Greeks . The first diet book came out in 1558  History of dieting 

What is diet culture? 

Diet culture has many definitions and facets but, in a nutshell, it’s a set of beliefs that worships thinness and equates it with health and moral virtue, according to anti-diet dietitian, Christy Harrison, M.P.H., R.D., C.D.N.,

Diet culture involves the preoccupation with physical appearance coupled with adhering to “perfect” eating standards.

Diet culture creates a link between your eating habits and your moral character.

Diet culture also dictates what types of bodies are acceptable in society

Diet culture promotes size in a hierarchical manner that portrays the latest trend of the so-called ‘perfect’ image as the pinnacle to health, happiness and success and then offers the ‘latest’ diet or ‘wellness’ plan to help you achieve this so-called ‘perfect’ image. 

 It is a billion dollar industry that thrives on our insecurities and is deeply weaved into our society and culture, it's hard to notice. 

It would take too long to go into too much detail but so much of what we have been told is a  ‘healthy diet' is inaccurate and often the research is funded by a corporate giant who benefits. Unfortunately a lot of the science behind most nutrition studies is limited and needs reviewing. 

Diet culture and media work hand in hand, one feeds the other. 

Whilst there is a push towards more size diversity in the media, especially in women (not much in men yet) we are still surrounded by this so-called ‘perfect’ image that is everywhere and often leads us to feeling inadequate, not good enough and desperate to change. Diet culture feeds off this and promotes solutions to all our problems. 

Almost every image you see in the media is similar; slim and lean if you are female, big and buff if you are male.  Social media platforms are filled with information about the latest ‘fad’ diet or influencers eating plan, which will likely have some scientific jargon and great before and after pictures. 

All of this often leaves you feeling you need to change and conform to what you see and start to follow. This often leads to some success and then years of yo-yoing of different eating and behaviour plans with small successes and many failures. It is a known fact that 98% diets fail and this leaves most of us feeling like we are the failure and there is something wrong with us!

Your size is a NOT a predictor of your health

We have been led to believe that the bigger we are, the more health problems we will have. Many health practitioners do not question this and corporate giants benefit from this belief, yet it is not as simple as this and slim people are often at just as much risk. There is more and more evidence to debunk this information. 

The bottom line: Weight alone is not indicative of health, so nobody can tell whether or not a person is healthy based on their weight.

 weight.https://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/a36065492/rethinking-body-weight/

The problem with diet culture is the one size fits all approach and each year there is a new ‘diet’ or ‘wellness’ plan that takes hold.

Why is this a problem? We are all very different.

We are genetically diverse, even siblings have different body shapes. 

Our age, stage, gender, health, environment and many other factors influence our body shape and needs.  Add to this the changes throughout our lifespan.

So many of us are desperately trying to hold on to our bodies from our youth or change our bodies to conform to the one ‘look’ society and diet culture says is the key to our happiness, health and success. 

This is not YOUR fault, it is the fault of evolution, society and the companies profiting from our insecurities. 

Diet culture affects people of all sizes, genders and race. 

In actual fact, there is no “right” body size, and even if there were, it’s not attainable to whomever does the “right” thing (or whatever weight loss trend may be viewed as “right” at the moment), as evidenced by the 98% failure rate of diets. This stat alone is proof of the no-win norm that we, as a society, have been groomed to abide by. In one fell swoop, diet culture sets us up to feel bad about ourselves — and judge other people, too — while also suggesting that losing weight will help us feel better.

Diet culture is often disguised as ‘The Wellness Diet’ .

“The Wellness Diet is my term for the sneaky, modern guise of diet culture that’s supposedly about ‘wellness’ but is actually about performing a rarefied, perfectionistic, discriminatory idea of what health is supposed to look like,” says Christy Harrison in her article, “How to Avoid Falling for The Wellness Diet.”

What can diet culture look like?

Diet culture is tricky and normalises disordered eating and behavioural patterns that support the desire to change one’s body and has been so deeply woven into our lives through the generations, not just through the media but also in the medical field that it is not easy to notice and dissect. 

This is a list of some of the diet culture behaviours we may experience; 

• Any kind of restriction 
• Elimination of food groups
• Detoxes, fasting and other rituals or rules 
• Associating your worth with your body, food and eating
• Any kind of disordered or eating disorder behaviour
• Dissatisfaction with your body that leads to mental exhaustion and a continuous war with your body, food and eating. 
• Moralizing food, eating and yourself (labeling food as good vs bad and feeling good vs bad because of your food and eating behaviours) 
• Rigid food rules 
• Food anxiety - always thinking about food
• Preoccupation with food, eating and our bodies - always thinking about what to eat, when to eat, how to eat and what exercise to do that is all linked to our body shape
• Letting the scale dictate your worth,mood and food choices 
• Mental diet fatigue - very often we spend so much thinking about dieting and being dissatisfied with ourselves, our behaviours and our bodies it is very exhausting
• Only ‘clean’ or ‘healthy’ eating 
• Purging - a need to get ‘rid’ of or justify the food (this can be vomiting, laxative or exercise) 
• Obsession with exercise
• Regularly use of the scale
• Using any kind of calorie counting devices and or fitness apps that predict how many calories you should eat / eaten 
• Judging and talking frequently about body shape and ‘wellness plans or diets’ 
• Eating low fat products
• Eating a vegetarian / vegan or other type diets with the intention to change your body
• Feeling guilt / shame / anger / disappointment or any other similar feeling around food, eating and your body 
• Ignoring body cues for hunger, food or rest
• Avoiding certain people, places or situations

Disclaimer: all of the above are when the intention and motivation is to change one's body because of dissatisfaction, which comes with a preoccupation around your body, food and eating. 

Diet culture usually starts because of dissatisfaction with how we look and the desire to change or hold onto our shape.

We want to change the body we have .We put conditions on ourselves. “If I lost weight, looked skinner, was more buff, lean etc then I would be happier. 

Our self worth gets linked to the scale, our size and our appearance.

This is called Body dissatisfaction or versions of this and usually comes with some level of disordered thinking and behaviour with food and eating.

Pitfalls of diet culture

• Disordered eating (add link) 
• Moralizing food and behaviours linked to food and eating
• Higher risk of Eating Disorders 
• Mental Restriction; a preoccupation of food and eating usually with a negative feeling.
• Mental health challenges: anxiety, low mood, depression, low self esteem, OCD
• Physical health challenges: higher risk for; poor immunity, bone density, cognitive function, cardiovascular disease
• Increased Aging 
• Loss of periods
• Less enjoyment and pleasure in life . 
• Can lead to other disordered behaviours such as obsession with exercise, shopping, healthy eating, sex and or other substances. 

Diet culture also normalizes labeling foods as good or bad and thinking of food as transactional—something that you either earn or don't deserve depending on how you've eaten and worked out. Not only is food labeled, but people may label themselves as good or bad for consuming these foods.

Diet culture gives food a moral value; good or bad and this in turn makes us feel ‘bad’ for eating or not eating certain foods. 

‘Diet culture mentality’ is exhausting. It takes up so much mental capacity, time, energy and often money and I have yet to find one person who can honestly admit they found what they were looking for once they have the so-called ‘perfect’ body. 

Take a look at the trailer of this incredible much needed film made by Taryn Brumfitt. After having her three children, she did not like her body, so went on to change it, enter a beauty contest and realized she was still not happy.

Embrace - “I am standing there with my perfect body and I am not happy. Too much sacrifice, too much time, too much obsession and it's just not worth it!”

The paradox is that those that do reach the pinnacle of the ‘perfect’ body are still not satisfied, they struggle to see themselves for what they are or they are desperately trying to hold onto the body they have.

They make huge sacrifices, are drained mentally, physically and often still unhappy. 

When I started to let go of my ‘diet culture’ mentality I found I had a new found freedom not just around food and eating but my mind was less anxious and busy, I was more relaxed. I slowly let go of my obsession with exercise and started to enjoy more of what my body wanted and needed, some days that was nothing, some it was yoga and some it’s a good hard cardio workout.

I am learning to listen to my own body wisdom from the inside, not letting the outside dictate what I should and shouldn’t do.  This is so freeing. 

How to let go of “diet culture’ mentality

• Notice - Firstly is to understand and create an awareness, then decide if you are tired of being blindsided and being at war with your body.
• Accept where you are - do not judge or beat yourself up, remember this is not your fault 
• Reframe - start to notice your thoughts and behaviours around your body, food and eating. Get curious about these and decide if they work for you or not. 
• Body Resilience - a lot of the ‘diet culture’ is due to a dissatisfaction with our body and appearance. You are more than your body, your body deserves respect, acceptance and gratitude for all it does for you (this is not simple or easy and takes time and persistence)
• Detox your social media - get rid of anyone that supports or promotes ‘diet culture’ 
• Health at every size - Understand that health and beauty standards are mixed up and narrow. Get to know more about HAS; Health at every size and appreciate that your size is not a predictor of your health or happiness. What is Health at every size
• Embrace intuitive eating and movement for pleasure not punishment 
• You are more than your body - start to think about everything good about yourself that has nothing to do with your body. 
• Make a list of all the benefits of letting go of ‘diet culture’ thinking 
• Learn more about diet culture for yourself and future generations

Diet culture is very alluring and appealing. It offers a solution, even if temporary. It gives you a sense of control and belonging. We are complex beings that crave connection and to fit in and diet culture feeds off this biological desire. 

If you feel out of control with your life, diet culture can often help you ‘follow’ something which gives you a feeling of control. 

Even if whatever it is you are doing may not be working and or causing you distress, this sense of ‘control’ and ‘belonging’ can feel good even if it causes a lot of anxiety and stress. 

Being resistant to diet culture is also not anti-health or anti-nutrition: It’s quite the opposite. With this movement, “It's absolutely possible that we can encourage and also give people the resources to eat healthy and to move their bodies in a healthy way without having to be the disciplinarians that tell people they must weigh a certain amount,” says Strings. The anti-diet movement advocates for evidence-backed measures of health that are not about body weight, and there are even anti-diet dietitians and health professionals, like Harrison, who help guide patients out of diet culture and into decisions that are healthy for body and mind — and that don’t aim to modify the body’s appearance.

Anti-diet aims to free people from spending every waking moment policing their bodies, wasting precious time and energy obsessing over food choices, calories, macros, and the like. It aims to help people fill their bellies with the food they want and need, and without the distraction of constant hunger, allow their minds to see issues that are much bigger and more important than the way we look and how we eat. It helps us realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not, in fact, locked within a smaller body requiring a "willpower" key, as diet culture has long made us believe.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a35036808/what-is-diet-culture/

Benefits of letting go of Diet culture

• Food Freedom - Getting rid of ridget food rules & behaviours. Eating whatever you want, whenever you want 
• Mind Freedom - letting go of the continuous sabotaging destructive thoughts around your body, food and eating. Less stress
• Pleasure -  Enjoying food and finding pleasure. We do not realize how much we sacrifice and letting go allows us to bring pleasure back into our lives, not just with food and eating. 
• Living life again - living with a diet culture mentality takes up so much time, energy and money. Letting go of this will allow you to fully live and enjoy your life. You can enjoy going out with friends and on holidays without worrying about the food and your body. 
• Improved self worth - although we usually fall into the diet culture trap because we don’t like something about ourselves yet the longer we stay in it, the more we struggle. Surprisingly with time and effort you realize that you are more than your body and the need for outside validation reduces, you learn to trust and value yourself. 
• Better connection in our relationships - diet culture has us living with so many rigid rules and destructive thinking and behaviours which often put a strain on our relationships 
• Improved sleep and immunity - when we free ourselves from the diet culture mentality and way of life, we find with time we feel more calm and relaxed.  These both benefit our bodies physically and mentally. 

My hope is to help create awareness of this hidden yet deceptively destructive culture and for you to start to let go of the self sabotaging destructive thoughts, beliefs and behaviours so many have been living with most of their life and start to make peace with your body, food and eating and live life fully. 

Warning: Whilst the long term benefits are amazing, I know that this shift is challenging and can initially cause more suffering. When letting go of any kind of restriction, we can enter the ‘feeding’ phase which is biological and can initially feel overwhelming and scary but with time, patience and persistence you will find that peace and learn to trust your own body wisdom. 

It is up to each of us to educate ourselves not just for our own benefit but also as a whole. The anti diet culture movement embraces diversity of size, colour and gender. It is pushing society to shift from the ‘thin’ ideal to health at every size (HAS**link) and have more body acceptance not just for ourselves but for everyone regardless of their size.