Hi ,

Diet Culture is so interwoven with the American way of life that even if you’re not actively dieting it may still be operating in your life.  

What does diet culture look like? 

Beside the obvious of trying to lose weight by dieting, diet culture is a moralistic viewpoint that embraces the idea that the ideal body is a thin one. It also promotes the idea that to be thin is to be happy. The bigger message is to be fat is bad!

This view point is the cause for most women to feel dissatisfied with their bodies. Studies show that 90% of women are unhappy with their bodies. The thin ideal causes women to view their bodies with distain and look at their bodies as something to be controlled and whipped into submission. This drives the need to diet.

When we buy into the thin ideal, we are also buying into a system of female oppression. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong about wanting to lose some weight and feel better in our body, but dieting with all its rigid rules combined with the fact no one actually succeeds at dieting is ultimately a losing game. 

Dieting is a setup for failure. The results don’t last and like an abusive relationship, they keep you sucked in with no real long term reward. Sure the weight comes off for a while, which brings temporary hope and happiness, but soon you find yourself overeating and back on the diet rollercoaster with only more pounds to show for it!

Dieting causes you to mistrust your body and lose your self-confidence and self-esteem. Each time you fail on a diet and go back to overeating, your sense of self takes a big hit. Over the years the regrets, shame, and guilt gets bigger along with the accumulated pounds.

Diet culture promotes the idea of good and bad foods. You’re good when you’re following your diet and you’re bad when you’re not. Any deviation is a setup for shame and guilt. Many people are on a diet and don't even know it. 

Any time you have groups of food that are off limits, judged as bad or forbidden, or are following a bunch of external rules restricting your food intake you are dieting. Not dieting means you listen to your internal cues of hunger and fullness and let your body guide you to what it wants to eat. 

You may also find yourself judging others by their food choices. “Yuk! She eats that?” Or even worse, shaming and/or judging someone because they've gained weight!

Dieting is often the trigger for eating disorders and binge eating. It certainly was the trigger for my binge eating. Telling myself that I couldn’t have chocolate, pizza, and the foods I craved made me binge on them. Then I would over exercise and diet to get rid of the unwanted weight. I was stuck in this cycle for about 13 years. 

As a coach, I see so many women who have wasted their life potential because they have spent decades struggling with food and weight obsession. These women could accomplish so much more in life if they weren’t spending their priceless life energy stuck in the dieting /overeating, food obsession cycle. 

This is why diet culture is oppressive. It steals a woman’s life energy and keeps her stuck in a self-defeating cycle of failure. If women didn’t struggle with feeling bad about their bodies and could regain all their lost self-confidence and self-esteem they could conquer the world!

So what is the answer to this? 

The first step is to let go of dieting and make peace with your body. Now that doesn’t mean you need to let go of the desire to lose some weight, it means that you accept the fact that all bodies come in all different shapes and sizes and there is nothing inherently wrong with yours, no matter what it currently weighs. Thin doesn’t mean better or happier.  

When you do this, you can appreciate your body for all it does for you and any attempts at self-improvement can come from a place of nurturing and taking good care of yourself and your body, rather than trying to run roughshod over your body and whip it into submission through self-hatred, control, and dieting.

When you can embrace your body, you and your body become a united front. You’re now a team in the pursuit of a healthier life. 

In vibrant health,