Unfortunately, diet culture surrounds us every single day. It is woven into the fabric of our society. While it may not be possible to avoid diet culture altogether, there are tools we can use to navigate our way through it, allowing us to reframe the harmful beliefs that diet culture has instilled in us.
By: Ally Rosen
But what is diet culture? It is a set of values that our society has become consumed with. Diet culture values thinness, cis-gender white appearance, and body shape and size above health and well-being. Diet culture values appearance more than how you feel, act, or think.
Below are five ways to challenge and reframe the messages we receive from diet culture. instances of what diet culture can look like and tools for how we can reframe it for ourselves:
Food Is Not Moral
Sometimes, diet culture insists that food can be assigned morality. For instance, you might hear someone call a particular food “good” or “bad.” People often equate their worth to whether or not they have eaten those perceived “good” or “bad” foods. You may hear people say something along the lines of, “I was really bad this weekend. I ate so many desserts.” In reality, the food you eat does not influence your moral value.
Your body sees nutrients as strictly protein, fat, and carbohydrates, no matter what form the food comes to us in. Whether pizza or a chopped salad, your body sees the same three macronutrients and breaks them down into glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids. Your body does not see food in a hierarchy, just nutrients and fuel. Thus, if you consider all foods equal and understand that food has no morality, you are one step ahead of diet culture.
Exercise for Joy, Not to Earn Food
We often get messages that we need to “earn” or “make up for” the food we eat through exercise. For some people, this looks like exercising for the “reward” of food. For others, it can look like exercising as a compensatory behavior for eating. You may have heard someone say, “I need to burn off the food I ate last night,” or “I took such a hard workout class today, so I earned this ice cream.” In reality, you need to eat and fuel your body regardless of your physical activity that day.
You do not need to “earn” food or compensate for eating food. Food is a necessity and not a reward. Thus, we can counter diet culture with “joyful movement.” Instead of exercising to “burn calories” or obtain a particular physique, we can employ movement that feels good. Movement has many benefits that are not related to manipulating body size or burning calories, including stress relief, mood improvement, increased energy levels, improved sleep, and cardiovascular health. Movement does not have to look the same for everyone, but it should be something you genuinely enjoy. The idea that exercise needs to be structured or high intensity with the goal of physique changes is an idea that diet culture has created. Ask yourself before you exercise: would you still choose this activity if it didn’t burn calories or change your body? Asking yourself this can help you explore your intention behind exercise to find movement that brings you joy and focuses on the benefits of exercise that aren’t weight- or calorie-related.
Body Size Does Not Equal Health
Unfortunately, diet culture insists that all weight loss is positive, and that “health” can only be achieved by reaching a specific weight. However, actual health and well-being are not determined by the size or shape of your body, and it will look different for every individual. We cannot evaluate a person’s health or well-being based on appearance, so it’s important to be mindful of appearance-based comments. Congratulating or complimenting weight loss reinforces the message that only certain body sizes are acceptable and assumes that weight loss equates to improved health. Complimenting weight loss could be complimenting someone’s eating disorder, physical illness, or mental health struggles. Diet culture convinces us that weight loss improves our health and our happiness and does not consider the complex nature of overall health/well-being, including mental health, emotional health, social health, financial health, and spiritual health. Instead, remember that “health” is complex and can be pursued in many different ways independent of body shape/size.
Honor Your Hunger
Somewhere along the way, diet culture decided that suppressing your appetite is normal and “impressive.” How often have you witnessed someone shamelessly bragging how little they had to eat all day? While ignoring and surpressing hunger cues has become normalized, this stands in the way of eating intuitively. If you aren’t connected to your internal body wisdom or try to manipulate or ignore body cues, it will be difficult to tap into hunger and fullness to guide food choices.
Instead, you can ditch the diet mentality and honor your hunger. Checking in on your hunger levels throughout the day might be helpful. Ask yourself, “on a scale of 1-10, 10 being uncomfortably full and one being ravenous, how hungry am I right now?” Getting in touch with your body’s signals is a huge step towards being able to eat intuitively and discover food freedom.
Set Boundaries
While it is challenging to avoid diet culture on social media or in conversation, there are boundaries that you can set that will help you to feel safer every day. You have every right to tell family and friends that it is unhelpful for them to comment on your food choices, body, or appetite. Filtering your social media intake can make a huge difference, as well. Instead of following people that make you feel more insecure, curate your feed to people that lift you, educate you, and make you feel seen and heard. If social media is not serving you, delete it altogether for a while.
Furthermore, if knowing your weight harms you as you work on your relationship with food and your body, it could be conducive for you to ask your medical providers to not be weighed at appointments At certain doctor’s appointments, collecting an updated weight may be required, so feel empowered to ask for a “blind weight” by turning around on the scale so you aren’t able to see the number. Then the doctor will have a weight for their record but they won’t share this number with you.
Ultimately, while you cannot change the world around us, you can utilize tools that make it just a bit more manageable for you. By employing these five reframing techniques, you can learn to navigate diet culture, hold space for yourself, and unlearn the harmful beliefs that no longer serve you.
At BALANCE eating disorder treatment center™, our compassionate, highly skilled team of clinicians is trained to diagnose and treat the spectrum of eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating, and other disordered eating behaviors and body image issues. In addition to our full-time Day Treatment Program and Weeknight Intensive Outpatient Program, we offer high-quality programming, individual nutrition counseling, meal support with a licensed dietitian and various other groups and resources to help those seeking help for food concerns.
Our admissions team would be happy to answer any questions you may have about our programs and services. Book a free consultation call with our admissions team below, or read more about our philosophy here.
This post was written by Former BALANCE Dietetic Intern, Ally Rosen (she/her).
Ally is a recent graduate of The University of California, Berkeley where she majored in Nutritional Science- Dietetics. She is now pursuing her Masters in Clinical Nutrition at New York University and studying to become a Registered Dietitian. She is currently a dietetic intern in her clinical rotation at BALANCE. She enjoys running, hiking, cooking, music, and writing. Ally led the Kids in Nutrition program at UC Berkeley, where she taught basic nutrition to elementary level kids. She also volunteered at The Berkeley Student Food Collective where she made affordable meals for students using food stamps. Ally wrote several nutrition-related articles for Spoon University during her time at Berkeley as well.
Ally’s involvement in these organizations has only fueled her passion for nutrition. In the future, Ally dreams of having her own private practice, and until then, she is excited to continue learning and experiencing more in all areas of dietetics.
