How and Why to Break Up with Diet Culture

If you want to feel better about food and your body, step one is dropping out of diet culture. I’ll share some specific action steps on how you can do this in just a moment.

But first …

What Exactly Is Diet Culture and Why Does It Matter? 

We’re all drowning in the toxic waters of diet culture every single day. 

It’s a $72 billion industry (they appropriately call it Big Bikini in the wonderful book Burnout by Lexi and Lindsay Kite!) that profits off of seeding and then exploiting food and body insecurities. 

In her fabulous book, Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison defines it as a system of beliefs woven into the very fabric of our society that “equates thinness … and particular body shapes with health and moral virtue.”

Diet culture also: 

• prioritizes weight loss and body sculpting over true health and wellbeing,

• glorifies some foods and ways of eating while demonizing others (leading to guilt, stress, and avoidance of entire food groups for no valid reason),

• and stigmatizes and prioritizes bodies, and the humans who live in them, according to weight, shape, size, and an impossibly narrow definition of beauty.

The Harmful Effects of Chronic Dieting and Weight Loss Programs

While diet culture is especially harmful to people in larger bodies, it negatively impacts people of all body shapes and sizes … leading to a widespread “weight loss at nearly any cost” mentality or a deep-seated fear of weight gain. 

Both of which can and do lead to high rates of disordered eating, eating disorders, chronic dieting, and weight cycling. 

I’m sure I don’t have to warn you about the dangers of eating disorders, but did you know that even weight cycling—that yo-yo weight gain and loss that frequently happens with repeated rounds of dieting—has been linked with significant negative health outcomes, including higher overall mortality and increased risk of heart disease, bone fractures, and emotional distress?

To be clear, it’s not the people who have a desire to lose weight that are the problem. Rather, it’s the culture that inundates us with endless messages that we need to shrink our bodies that is so very harmful.

Diet culture has been around for quite a long time (for a detailed history, check out the book Anti-Diet), but it’s growing bigger and bigger and more toxic all the time. It’s so big, in fact, that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a whopping 49% of all US adults tried to lose weight between 2013 and 2016—the number climbs to 56% if you look at only women!

I know you may be thinking, but what about health? The connection between increased weight and poorer health outcomes is not as clear cut as is often stated. I’ll write another post with more detail on this soon, but for now you can check out this research study or this one if you’re interested in learning more. 

Plus, since weight is not a behavior, I believe it’s far more effective to focus on actions that are fully within your control, rather than the scale, when trying to improve lifestyle-related health conditions. 

How Diet Culture Shows Up in Your Day to Day Life

Perhaps an even better way to understand diet culture is to consider all the ways it shows up in our daily lives. We would need way more time than we have here to run through them all but below are some examples you may recognize:

• Before and after weight loss images

• Advertisements for diets, meal plans, “lifestyle changes,” and endless pills, teas, supplements, shakes, and other products and services promising weight loss

• Celebrities touting certain ways of eating, bashing others, or promoting weight loss or body shaping goods and services

• Fat-shaming “jokes” and messages in TV shows, movies, etc.

• Conversations with girlfriends, co-workers, or family that moralize food choices, promote dieting, or fixate on body size or shape 

• Messages that tell us we need to earn or burn our food or calories through exercise

• Food labels, such as healthy, unhealthy, clean, junk, sinful, guilty pleasure, and many others that moralize food and eating behaviors and trigger eating guilt

• Unsolicited commentary on our food choices (such as “you’re going to eat that?” or “if I ate that, I’d weigh XYZ” or “I don’t know how you eat like that and stay so slim”)

• Vilifying entire food groups (like dairy or carbs)

 And, sadly, the list goes on and on!

Why Does It Matter and How Can You Opt Out of the Diet Culture Mentality?

✨ In short, diet culture robs us of the joy of nourishing, moving, connecting with, caring for, and celebrating our bodies. ✨

That’s why intentionally opting out is such a critical step for healing your relationship with food and your body and finding the happy, healthy middle ground when it comes to food, eating, and other health habits.

Ready to say goodbye?

Here are 3 steps you can take to break up with diet culture immediately:

1.   Begin to tune into all the ways, shapes, and forms that diet culture shows up in your everyday life and how it makes you feel.

Most people are shocked once they realize how loud and pervasive these messages are. But raising awareness is the first step to creating lasting change, so identifying and tuning into the problem—and how it makes you feel—is powerful motivation to cut ties.

2. Walk away … actively reject diet culture messaging.  

Turn off TV advertisements, change the channel on the radio, unfollow weight-loss driven social media accounts, block friends who post before and after photos or any other diet- or weight-driven messages, unsubscribe from diet-driven email lists, change the subject when friends, family, or coworkers start talking about dieting, weight loss, or bashing their bodies. Remove yourself from as many diet culture situations as you can. 

➡️ If you’re not sure whether something qualifies as diet culture, ask yourself this simple question: Does the situation in any way make me feel bad about my body or my food choices? If your answer is yes, that’s a big diet culture clue!

3. Decide to make your home a diet culture-free zone. 

Set boundaries with family members and guests that you will not talk about anyone’s body shape, size, or weight. Nor will you comment on anyone’s food choices or eating behaviors.

Some people think that hanging on to diet culture or weight loss messaging is a way to motivate themselves towards a healthier lifestyle. In reality, letting go is an act of liberation that will empower you to find food and body peace and an enjoyable, lasting approach to health-promoting self-care. 💕

Following an Intuitive Eating approach to nutrition, health, and wellness can help you break free of the diet culture chains for good. Not sure if it’s right for you? Read this blog to find out: How to Know If Intuitive Eating Is Right For You.