Dear Diet Culture Letter: Pervasiveness and Manipulation

Dear Diet Culture,

It’s me, Sunday.

I know your teeth have fully sunken in as Thanksgiving has past. It’s officially the “holiday season” and you are gearing up for your annual big show in the New Year, and lord knows what that is going to look like this year considering we are still in a pandemic. I can bet though that you have plans to make it even more insidious, omnipresent and shameful. As I wrote in my letter last week, you love this time of year.

But here’s the thing that is making me most mad this week: nothing stops you. We are in a second wave of a pandemic, a sentence I never thought that I would ever be able to write in my lifetime, and yet you are STILL HERE. You are honestly like an abusive, manipulative partner in this way. You don’t respect boundaries, you don’t listen to “no,” you shame and criticize people and tell them it’s their fault, and then you tell them that the only solution to getting out is by staying with you, and spending money on you, when you are the one who started this!

It’s absurd and strategic.

And look, I know that you are in cahoots with other oppressive systems like racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and toxic capitalism. I know y’all fuel one another like an “elite” club of really slimy people that control so much of the world and yet didn’t do a thing to work your way into that position of power.

But here’s why I am hopeful this week: There is a movement that is impacting your existence that has been brewing for some time and is only getting larger by the day, and I see it making it harder and harder for you to breath. In fact, I know this is happening because you keep getting sneakier. Why hide, Diet Culture, when you aren’t afraid? Oh that’s right, you have to do this because more and more people are finding out about you and all the ways that you have oppressed them, and their families, for years and generations.

So while you won’t leave, I am going to keep making it harder and harder for you to exist. Every week with every letter, IG post, client session and group that I run, I will keep making sure that people know you and all of your harm.

And in this way, I believe that everyone can have an impact on you shrinking and your power decreasing. Parents, teachers, mentors, instructors, health professionals, personal trainers, coaches, and SO many more people that impact other people are making and taking significant steps in challenging you by not perpetuating your myths, correcting people when they make harmful comments that you have endorsed, being mindful of what they say to themselves and others, doing their own internal work to heal from you, and showing up to collectively resist you.

And for this, I am grateful that I get to be part of a badass community.

Sincerely,

Sunday, aka your most passionate anti-diet Dietitian Katherine who wants you to know that diet culture is abusive and that what you are doing matters to dismantle diet culture no matter how “small” you think it is