Dear Diet Culture Letter: You Lead to Exhaustion and Burnout

Dear Diet Culture,

It’s me, Sunday.

As we arrive together to the last month of 2020 (no, I am not happy you are here and no we did not “make it together," please save that nonsense for your other friends like The Patriarchy), I have been thinking about all the ways that you have exacerbated a shit storm of traumatic events that have taken place this year.

You literally did not take one single break, not one. You really do have a hard time reading the room.

People are burnt out. They are exhausted, fatigued, and running on EMPTY. And you have contributed to this feeling of burnout (or at minimum contributed to them not having a break from it) and here is why: Your unrelenting attempt to convince people that no matter what they do and no matter how hard they try, there food intake (kinds, types, patterns, quality, etc.) and their body is never good enough is exhausting.

What this means is that you, Diet Culture, don’t allow people’s body weight to settle where it wants to be and where it feels safest. You don’t allow people to create a sense of belonging and home in their own bodies. You don’t allow for people to actually take breaks and rest. You don’t allow people to eat nourishing, energy-dense and carbohydrate-rich foods.

You don’t allow for people to restore themselves so that they can escape the cycle of burnout. Instead, you perpetuate it. You send people’s nervous systems into a tizzy because you are threatening as hell to their brains and body! Any signal to the body that it’s not going to get food, even when it’s just a thought like “I shouldn’t be eating this” or, “this is the last time I will eat this,” is enough to activate the nervous system into fight/flight.

So long story short (because I know you don’t love getting these letters from me each week): you are deeply connected to people’s felt sense of exhaustion and burnout. But I know you know this. You have been at this for a while now!

And I guess that makes sense though, huh?

People that are burnt out are even more vulnerable to anything that you promise them to “feel better” and relieve some of their symptoms especially when you brand it as “energy boosting” or “invigorating,” even when it’s a diet rebranded.

So, we see you Diet Culture. You are not wellness. You are not a solution to exhaustion. You are not here to help.

Sincerely,

Sunday, aka your most passionate anti-diet Dietitian Katherine who wants you to know that diet culture is often one of the contributing factors to burnout and that you can find the tools to heal from burnout that don’t involve dieting (food restriction) or shrinking your body