I talk about diet culture pretty frequently – I almost always bring it up with clients, and I’ve mentioned it in most of my blog posts so far. In this post, I define diet culture and share a few thoughts on how it affects us and what we can do about it.
In 2019, the diet industry grew to a $72 billion industry, and it is still booming. Its impact is perhaps most obvious in the media – on television, in our Instagram feeds, in advertising we hear on the radio. But we also hear diet tricks and tips in our workplaces or out with friends, and are inundated with dieting books and weight loss programs. Diet culture refers to the belief system underlying this massive industry, and which nowadays permeates our society in countless ways. Here’s my definition of diet culture: it’s a belief system that promotes thinness as the ideal, prescribes weight loss as a way to increase happiness and self-worth, and assigns moral values to food choices. In the process, this mindset oppresses those who don’t match the ideal and convinces people they need to spend their money and time on shrinking their body.
You don’t have to be on a diet to be enmeshed in diet culture. In fact, it’s pretty hard not to be. Starting from a young age, we pick up diet culture messages and learn that our bodies don’t look like they “should.” These messages come in many different forms and places, and we all hear and see them constantly throughout our lives. Sometimes diet culture comes across in obvious ways – such as advertisements for a new fad diet, before and after photos, or an “anti-obesity” campaign. Sometimes it is more subtle – praise from a friend for looking “thinner,” a fat joke on a TV show, or comments like the ones I’ve been hearing recently about weight gain fears during the pandemic.
Christy Harrison of the Food Psych podcast and author of the book “Anti-Diet” has a nickname for diet culture: “It’s a sneaky, shape-shifting thing that robs people of their time, money, health, happiness, and so much more, which is why I’ve nicknamed it The Life Thief. It can be hard to spot, and yet in Western culture, it’s everywhere.”
Let’s be clear: dieting doesn’t work. Research shows that dieting actually leads to weight gain over time, as it disrupts our body’s natural weight regulation. Moreover, dieting often leads to weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) which is far more harmful to health than staying at a higher weight. Diet culture and all the messages that come with it are distracting people from more important matters, weakening their body image, and setting them up for failure. If dieting actually worked, I suppose it wouldn’t be a $70 billion dollar industry – but people feel they are the ones to blame for their dieting failures, and so they keep going back to it, even though dieting is repeatedly failing them.
I’ll share a couple thoughts on ways you might lessen diet culture’s impact in your own life.
First, perhaps it’s time to change up your social media feeds. Clear your feeds from accounts that promote weight loss, encourage dieting, or talk about “good,” “bad,” or “clean” foods. Stop following hashtags that make you feel bad about your body, that lead you to make unhelpful comparisons, or that equate thinness with improved health outcomes. And add some accounts that normalize larger bodies! Following people of a diverse range of body shapes and sizes can be a powerful way to heal, to reduce internalized weight stigma, and to simply be exposed to and reminded of the fact that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and that’s normal. If you need some recommendations, check out this article, which lists body positive Instagram accounts in different spheres, including activists, yogis, fashion, and more.
Second, get rid of the dieting tools! The scale, the weight loss app, calorie counting, food rules – you don’t need them. It can feel really scary to let go of these things. This way of thinking and being feels unknown and foreign to many of us who have grown up in diet culture. Reading HAES-informed books, listening to podcasts, and talking with a weight inclusive, non-diet therapist or dietitian can be supportive resources as you let go of the dieting mentality and move toward intuitive eating and body acceptance. A few of my favorite resources to recommend as you get started include the podcasts Food Psych by Christy Harrison and Body Kindness by Rebecca Scritchfield, and the books Nourish by Heidi Schauster and Body Respect by Bacon & Aphramor.
You can see why I talk about this a lot. Diet culture makes it really hard (but not impossible!) to recover from an eating disorder. It makes it really hard to learn that you don’t have to restrict food, avoid food, or diet to be healthy. It makes it really hard to accept your body as it is and to know your self-worth. We have to talk about diet culture, do the important work of dismantling it, and move toward creating a culture of acceptance.