What is diet culture?

Diet culture puts value on physical characteristics such as weight and attractiveness over long-term physical and emotional health. Typically, diet culture hyper focuses on a specific set of often unrealistic expectations and rules that must be followed in order to obtain the desired outcome such as calorie counting, restriction, negative self-talk, and categorizing food as “good” and “bad”.

Ultimately, diet culture throws out bioindividuality and that people come in all shapes and sizes, and oversimplifies health to equate thinness with being healthy.

Examples of Diet Culture

The thing about diet culture is that it is so ingrained throughout our society. While some examples of diet culture are obvious, some are actually things that we consider “normal”. Some examples of this include:

     1. Filters and photoshop

Photoshop and social media filters aren’t always harmful. Silly filters can be fun to use on social media and photoshop is used by photographers and artists to create beautiful graphics and images. However, they are also used by magazines and celebrities to promote an unrealistic expectation of what you should look like that is far from attainable - the underlying ethos of diet culture. 

     2. “Cheat” days

Giving yourself one day to “splurge” on any food you want not only puts foods in “good” and “bad” categories, it perpetuates an unhealthy relationship with food by encouraging restriction and other diet culture habits instead of moderation and eating intuitively every day.

     3. Clothing sizes

Standard clothing sizes aren’t necessarily inclusive. It can be difficult for all shapes and sizes to shop at common stores and find items that fit without having to shop in a special section. This limits the style of clothing someone can buy and excludes them from the latest styles that everyone else is wearing because they don’t fit into what clothing brands deem as the “right” size. Diet culture puts bodies in a box depending on whatever body type is currently trending.

Why Diet Culture is Toxic

Because of how influential diet culture is in our society, it can lead to a variety of negative effects on people’s mental health and relationship with food.

     1. It leads to discrimination

Clothing sizes are just one very small example of diet culture and weight discrimintion, but we can see this in the lack of diversity across all types of media - film, tv, modeling, etc. This lack of representation can trickle down and encourage feelings of negative self-worth if you don’t fit within the mold of what you see being promoted as the best, most attractive body type.

     2. It promotes eating disorders

Eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are clinically diagnosable conditions that affect 9% - close to 28.8 million Americans - of the U.S. of the population. (1) But you don’t have to be diagnosed with one of these conditions to struggle with disordered eating. Diet culture can lead you to have a poor relationship with food out of an intense fear of gaining weight and the desire to shed pounds to reach a desired appearance. Being afraid of gaining a single pound, limiting your food intake to extremely small portion sizes, fasting, binge eating, aversions to certain food groups, and obsessively checking the scale are all signs of disordered eating.

     3. It encourages orthorexia

Orthorexia is a condition characterized by obsessive behavior in pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. And while that might not seem like it would be so bad at first glance, typically, those who suffer from orthorexia display symptoms similar to anxiety and other eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa.

• You silently judge others for eating “unhealthy” foods
• You fluctuate between binging and being super strict
• Meals trigger anxiety
• Compulsive checking of nutritional labels
• An inability to eat outside a small group of “healthy” foods
• Feelings of intense guilt when eating outside of your ideal healthy diet
• Anxiety, stress, or panic attacks when healthy food isn’t available
• Avoidance of social activities
• Hyper-focus on food preparation techniques
• Not eating food made by others
• A drastic increase in natural supplements

The key difference between orthorexia and other eating disorders is that anorexia or bulimia is the underlying reason for the obsession. Instead of being weight-focused (although weight can certainly be a factor for why some become orthorexic), those with orthorexia are obsessed with achieving and maintaining the “perfect” diet or wellness routine. In fact, they need to follow this perfect diet and wellness routine exactly in order to feel okay on a daily basis. This just shows that the effects of diet culture don’t have to look the same for each person.

Because of this hyper-focus on wellness as a whole, orthorexia can ultimately impact everyday life. As orthorexia continues to persist, it can lead to social isolation since realistically, no one can maintain a perfectly healthy diet and lifestyle 100% of the time. It can also lead to anxiety and panic attacks that strike anytime you are confronted with a situation where you can’t follow your routine.

     4. It sets unrealistic expectations

Diet culture makes us believe that if we just follow this diet or stick to these rules, we will finally lose weight and achieve the body we desire. But again, not everyone’s body is meant to look the exact same, and when you aren’t able to achieve that “look” because of the natural shape of your body, shame and guilt set in.

It has also been proven time and time again that diets don’t work. For one, we believe in functional medicine that you have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy. A “diet” is not going to achieve the results you want because they aren’t sustainable. Instead, focusing on getting healthy will help you lose any excess weight naturally and keep it off because you’re actually focusing on the right things. When losing weight isn’t your main goal, you’ll feel better and become the strongest, healthiest version of you - not what diet culture says the healthiest version of you should look like.

How To Recover From Diet Culture

     1. Talk with a licensed counselor

Working with a professional mental health professional can help you understand your fear and anxiety surrounding food, identify any emotional triggers, and give you practical tools for moving past negative self-talk and healing your relationship with food and overcoming diet culture.

     2. Learn to eat intuitively

No two bodies are the same and no two days look identical for the same person. What your body needs one day versus another can vary greatly depending on if you have a cycle, your activity levels, and many other factors. 

Learning to listen to your body and eat intuitively will help you make the best choices when it comes to food. Once you understand how to eat intuitively, you’ll be able to recognize your body’s natural hunger cues so you eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. You’ll also be able to eat guilt-free, whether that is eating more carbs one day because you’ve been more active or choosing to not restrict yourself from a piece of chocolate to satisfy your sweet tooth.

     3. Get rid of your scale

It’s time to say goodbye to your scale once and for all and the temptation that goes along with it to measure your health by how much you weigh. The reality is, weight is just some arbitrary number that true health can’t be measured by. Instead, shift your focus to other types of measurables such as how you feel on a daily basis. Are you sleeping well, do you have more energy throughout your day, are you happier? These are all better, more sustainable, and encouraging indicators of your health than your weight ever will be.

     4. Run labs

If you are chronically ill, the fear surrounding food is very real. I know firsthand for my patients with autoimmune conditions, meal times can be anxiety-inducing if you are constantly worried about whether or not you are going to have an adverse reaction from a certain food and feel sick for days or weeks. 

This is where labs come in. Not everyone needs to eliminate certain foods - nor is that helpful most of the time - however, labs can reveal whether or not a real food allergy is present and give you peace of mind moving forward of what foods you actually need to avoid (if any) so you can enjoy meals worry-free.

Rise Above Diet Culture

Even though diet culture surrounds us each and every day, we don’t have to be ruled by it. Once we are aware of the issue, we can do our due diligence to heighten our awareness and shift our mindset to what really matters - becoming the healthiest version of ourselves.

Instead of working out to lose weight, we workout to become stronger. Instead of viewing vegetables and salads as restricting diet foods, find ones you like and eat them because they fuel your body and provide you with nutrients to do all the fun things you love each day. 

Although diet culture can be damaging, we can’t ignore the real chronic health problems that people face on a daily basis. In my telehealth functional medicine clinic, I aim to bridge the gap between diet culture and long-term, sustainable health changes.

We aim to address healing through dietary adjustments and lifestyle changes; however, we work with every single individual to come up with a plan that fits where you are physically, mentally, and emotionally. You can’t heal a body you hate, and we do everything we can to honor your journey and walk with you every step of the way to achieve your health goals while maintaining a healthy relationship with food.

If you are ready to heal your relationship with food and take back control of your health, set up a consultation. As one of the first functional medicine telehealth clinics in the world, we provide webcam health consultations for people around the globe.

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