Dear Diet Culture Letter: The Power of Slowing Down

Dear Diet Culture,

It’s me Sunday.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much you interrupt people’s ability to take things slow in life. Ya know, to really allow themselves to go slowly as they unlearn, heal and recover. Everything to you needs to be fast and urgent, and you tend to promise people quick “outcomes” (big eye roll) . Your foot is always on the gas pedal and it’s annoying.

Your speed, along with the speed of a capitalist culture, makes slowing down so hard even when people want to. You encourage speed in the name of “health and wellness” when really it’s just about telling everyone that their bodies need to be smaller and thinner, often at the cost of their mental and physical well-being.

But here’s the rub: healing takes time.

It takes making space for feelings which means having to go slow enough to feel them. It takes slowing down to learn how to develop the tools to connect with the body, especially in a body that has experienced trauma.

It takes slowing down to learn how to challenge food fears and reengage with food after years of rules and limitations. It takes time to reconnect with hunger and fullness cues and all the beautiful nuance that comes along with that. It takes time to unlearn family of origin patterns and to create a new compassionate voice within. It takes time to fully understand the body’s story, to learn how to set food/body boundaries and start to create a life that is value-aligned. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It takes time, all of it. And this is where you get uncomfortable, Diet Culture.

This is because when people slow down they see how harmful you are, they see your tricky ways, and they see how toxic your messaging is.

They wake up to you which means you can no longer profit off their insecurities and self-hatred.

There is power in slowness. In slowness they see you Diet Culture, and they are watching. 

Warmly, 

Sunday aka your most friendly, righteously indignant, non-diet Dietitian Katherine who wants you to know that healing and recovery takes time and Diet Culture doesn’t like that