5 Ways To Resist Diet Culture
“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.”
—Nayyirah Waheed
Diet culture is backed by a multi-billion dollar industry that tells us that there is an ideal body type, an ideal way to eat, an ideal way to be healthy, an ideal way to be beautiful, and that we should spend our lives trying to achieve these status markers at any cost. It so pervasive that it can be hard to define it because it is literally all around us and within ourselves, either consciously or subconsciously. While diet culture will often mean different things to different people based on their individual experiences, it is widely regarded as a system of beliefs that:
Worships thinness. It perpetuates the idea that people who are thin, are automatically healthy, more attractive, more worthy, and better than someone in a larger body. This, in turn, results in weight-stigma or the belief that larger bodies are inherently less-than, lazy or wrong.
Assigns foods as "good" or "bad'. It encourages the use of food rules and restrictions to manipulate body size. This hyper-vigilance around eating results in a vicious cycle of reward and punishment, and guilt and shame around food choices and behavior.
Promotes weight loss as a way to achieve the higher status associated with thinness, and measures the effectiveness of a workout by its ability to help manipulate one's body size towards this goal.
As you can see, there is a lot to unpack around diet culture and staying stuck in it is like signing on for an on-going emotional roller coaster of body obsession and shame. The first step in resisting it, is to know what to look out for, so here are five ways to begin resisting diet culture, begin to heal your body image, and find body acceptance.
Cleanse your social media: Consider unfollowing (or muting) anyone who makes you feel bad about your body or who promotes changing your body as a way to become more worthy. Following people of all shapes and sizes can help you begin to see and believe that bodies are meant to be wonderfully different. The realization that we are not all supposed to be the same size can bring peace, and allow you to be kinder to yourself, especially on tough days.
Try giving compliments based on how that person makes you feel, in place of compliments about their appearance: You never know what is going on in someone’s life. When you comment on someone’s appearance, you could be inadvertently reinforcing and/or praising pain, trauma, sickness, disordered eating and exercise behavior, among many other unknown factors.
Shift the way you view exercise: Instead of asking yourself, “Does this ‘count’ as a workout?”, try this reframe, “All movement is valid, and so is rest.” It can be easy to judge your movement choices. Diet culture tells us that movement only “counts” if it is “enough”…hard enough, intense enough, heavy enough, or enough to change our bodies. This immense pressure often leads to overtraining, injury, burnout, and withdrawal, to name a few. The key is to check in with yourself from time to time, about the motivation behind your choices. Ask yourself, “Does this [movement or workout] bring me closer to body peace?”
Choose goals based on how you want to feel, instead of how you want to look: As you heal your body image and relationship with exercise, “goals” may or may not have a place in your process, and that is totally okay! Goal setting is tricky when it comes to an anti diet culture approach to movement because it can be a toxic and manipulative concept that is steeped in diet culture. Allowing how you feel to guide you can be a helpful way to stay true to yourself in this process. An example of a goal based on how you want to feel: “I’d like to be able to take my dog for a walk without feeling out of breath” or “I’d like to feel more confident going up a flight of stairs.”
When talking to yourself about your body, reach for the kinder thought: The narrative inside our heads can either break us down or build us up. The not-so-kind thoughts often just run on auto-pilot, and we may not even realize when it’s happening. Practice noticing your thoughts more, and be curious about whether they are coming from a place of self-judgement. The more you start to notice them, the more you can start to practice reaching for the kinder thought. Here is an example: On tough body image days, instead of saying, “I feel/I am/I hate/I look [any judgement about your body],” try this phrase, “I recognize that I’m having a tough body image day and it will pass.”
You don’t have to try and tackle all five of these things at once. Pick the one that feels the most manageable and use it as your main act of diet culture resistance until you feel ready to add on another one, and so on.
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You can always book a free discovery call with me to talk through your specific needs around body image mindset, and movement, and we can work together to set goals based on how you want to feel.
