What is diet culture and how do I break from it?

As many of you may have started to see on social media and elsewhere, the idea of rejecting

diets and becoming “anti-diet” is being seen more and more often. In order to be anti-diet,

however, one first needs to understand the vastness of diet culture that others are working to

break from. Diet culture has existed since the days of Aristotle and is so prominent in our

society today, that many of it’s strongholds and ideals may seem normal. Diet culture operates on the belief that the “ideal” body is thin, typically white, and attained through maintaining proper diet and exercise, often through one’s “willpower”. Examples of this can be seen nearly everywhere. Constantly, people are talking about the Keto Diet and going “gluten free”, even Weight Watchers rebranding itself to “W2” and emphasizing wellness is cloaked in diet culture. Diet culture is a multi BILLION dollar industry that feeds off of the majority of us being unsatisfied with our bodies.

Then what is the point of being anti-diet? Anti-diet brings awareness to the realities of dieting

and the diet industry. The truth is that many of us are not able to change our bodies through

diet and exercise and this concept of willpower, in regards to food/dieting, essentially does not exist. Extensive research has been done on the “weight set point” that all of our bodies have, and the difficulties (near impossibility) of changing that. You may be able to lose weight

through restricting and intense over-exercising, but how long are you able to keep it off? For a majority of people (92-95%), that is between 2-5 years at most. Diet culture will have you

believe that this is a “lack of willpower” or that you gained the weight back because you “didn’t adhere to your diet/exercise regiment stringently enough”. However, in reality, it is due to the fact that your body is working to maintain a healthy weight for itself and, thus, you are hungry and feel the need to eat. Our physical body cannot understand the concept of a diet – it interprets this behavior as famine and reacts as such. In addition, many people who do lose weight develop an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise, meaning that weight loss can come at the cost of your mental health.

This is where anti-diet culture can be healing. Anti-dieters are here to tell you that YOU are not the problem – diet culture is the problem! As an anti-diet therapist, I want to help you heal your relationship with food, find movement that brings you joy, and help you overcome the

obstacles of being in a larger, softer, etc. body when our society makes it difficult for those

people to exist, thus continuing the cycle. Research has proven that the impacts of diet culture and living in a fat-phobic society are more harmful than the actual fat on your body.

What are the first steps to being anti-diet? Stop dieting. This concept sounds much more simple than it is in reality. We need to find ways to love, appreciate and respect our bodies for all that it provides, instead of punishing it for not looking the exact way that diet culture leads us to believe we need to. Appreciate what your body does for you everyday. The fact that you are able to read this article and think critically can be appreciated. The fact that your body helped you get out of bed this morning can be appreciated and so much more. Always remember that you are incredible just as you are and any person, company, product, etc. that is telling you otherwise is the problem – you are not the problem.