What’s Diet Culture and Why Is It Harmful?
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Diet culture is the set of beliefs and practices that equate thinness with health and moral superiority.
It is a system that perpetuates the idea that you must control your body size and shape through restrictive eating and exercise in order to be “healthy” and worthy of love, respect, and wellbeing. This system has been normalized in society, to the point where it is difficult to recognize and challenge.
Diet culture is defined as a system that:
Encouragement of the constant pursuit of weight loss, regardless of the impact this may have on your mental and/or physical well-being
Oversimplification of weight and BMI as the sole determinant of health, disregarding social determinants of health which have a much greater impact on your health
Promotion of diets that advocate for food restriction of foods or calories.
Ignores the health impacts of systematic oppression, such as fatphobia, racism, ableism, and homophobia
Villanizes certain foods and glorifies other foods
Idealizes the ability to restrict one’s food intake calls it having “self-control or will-power”
Ideates that one’s thinnes defines their status in society when it comes to education, health, intelligence, attractiveness, beauty, worthiness, etc.
Encourages you to achieve its ever changing body and beauty standards, with the assumption that you are “lazy” or “unmotivated” when you can’t sustain these standards.
Who is affected and impacted by diet culture?
Everyone is affected by diet culture. Parents, men, women, children, doctors, dietitian, models, personal trainers, chiropractors, young adults, etc. Diet culture is not selective who it impacts because it is a system of beliefs that exist and are in place. Diet culture impacts the way health policies are created, how much health care costs, nutrition guidelines, media images/videos, and so much more.
Diet culture also disproportionately impacts those that are most marginalized in our society. It’s important to note that restricting food and adhering to social physical standards of eating and looking can be an attempt for an already oppressed group to avoid further discrimination and oppression from the world. Some examples of marginalized groups that are negatively impacted by diet culture include:
BIPOC (black indigenous people of color). Diet culture is fixed in racism. In the 19th century, colonists created a social narrative that black and indigenous people of color were “gluttonous” when it came to food. Additionally the difference in body types of black women slaves vs. white women at the time was a way to further the narratives of “savagery and oversexualization”. Eurocentric standards of beauty were promoted at the time and continue to this day.
People in larger bodies/fat bodies. Our society is incredibly fatphobic. Research shows that people in fat bodies are less likely to be hired in the workforce or given promotions at work. People in fat bodies are also less likely to be diagnosed with eating disorders because of medical weight bias and weight stigma in the healthcare system.
LGBTQIA+ individuals. Diet culture’s unattainable ideals only worsen body dysphoria that can be present for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and put the LGBTQ+ at increased risk for the development of eating disorders.
Whats the harm of diet culture?
Diet culture causes harm in innumerous ways, both to individuals and to groups of people. Some ways that diet culture harms you are:
Diet culture causes weight-cycling
Diet culture is largely responsible for the experience known as “weight-cycling” or “yo-yo dieting”. If you have found yourself consumed by the diet cycle, you may have experienced something like this: Diet culture makes you feel like there is something wrong with your body and tells you that the solution to this is losing weight and going on a diet; so you go on a diet.
With this first diet you lose weight. However, you can’t sustain the food restriction this diet encourages so you stop the diet. After this you gain the weight back and then usually some additional weight. This leaves you feeling even more frustrated than before. So you go on another diet! And then the cycle repeats itself over and over. This is weight cycling.
Weight cycling is extremely harmful to your health. Researchers are finding that the chronic diseases we historically blame on body fat are actually the result of weight cycling, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol. It also puts you at greater risk for binge eating (Tylka et al. 2014). Weight cycling (Field et al. 2004) puts your body at risk for increased mortality, loss of muscle tissue, chronic inflammation, chronic diseases, metabolic disorders, and more.
Diet culture and dieting decreases food variety
Diet culture impacts the kinds of foods that you consume which as a result, and over time, reduces the variety of foods eaten due to fear mongering and moral labeling of foods. Most people start off limiting a handful of foods, then a little more, then some more and before you know it you’re limited to a very small group of foods that feel safe. This often leads to feelings of boredom and dissatisfaction with the foods that you’re eating. It also can lead to nutrient deficiencies.
Diet culture promotes harmful body “ideals”
Diet culture is a system of beliefs and those beliefs are rooted in the idea that people who have thin bodies are superior, more attractive, more intelligent, more deserving of respect and more deserving of quality healthcare and treatment. Not only this, diet culture’s “ideal” of what your body is supposed to look like is ever-changing; it’s a target that it doesn’t want you to hit and if you do, it will change to a different one quickly.
Diet culture encourages inconsistent eating
Diet culture has convinced you that the less you eat, the healthier you are. It encourages you to eat less foods, eat less calories, and eat less often. And despite low calorie diets pretending they’re not restrictive, they are. Inconsistent eating and reducing your overall energy intake from food is not health supportive despite what diet culture promotes.
In this way Diet culture promotes disordered eating patterns and encourages eating disorders. When you restrict the types of foods you eat, how much food you eat, and how often you eat, you aren’t giving your body the fuel it needs.
What can you do to challenge diet culture?
1.Eat a variety of foods
Instead of focusing on cutting out foods from your diet, focus on incorporating more foods into your diet! Ensure that the food you eat includes the kind of variety that will keep your body satisfied. Incorporate foods that you’ve previously restricted. Bring in fun and playful foods! And don’t forget that your body needs a variety of protein, carbs, and fat as are essential to get every day, multiple times per day.
2. Eat consistently
Human bodies need food every 2-4 hours to function properly. You can think of your body like a car. You wouldn’t drive your car on empty, would you? This doesn’t mean that you need to stick to a rigid schedule, it just means that paying attention to the time that has passed can give you a good estimate of when you may need to eat again.
3. Stop dieting
Diet culture doesn’t tell you that diets are not sustainable. Diets typically only last 6 months to a year before dieters can no longer maintain the restriction. Research has even shown that after a diet attempt, 65% of dieters return to their pre-diet weight. You cannot trick your body into eating less food, and diets just don’t work.
4. Don’t use fitness apps
Avoid using fitness apps to count your steps, calories, nutrition needs, etc. These apps are not designed for individualized care and broadly assume that all people are the same. They do not ask about medical conditions or history, which is so important for your health! These apps recommended caloric intakes that are way too low for most people. Don’t let these apps try to convince you that they are not diets!
5. Learn about anti-diet culture ideals
Rejecting diet culture can be challenging and scary, but there are frameworks that you can use to guide you through it. Remember that being anti-diet culture doesn’t mean that you’re anti-health. Intuitive eating(IE) and Health At Every Size (HAES) can be helpful as IE helps you to reconnect you with your hunger and fullness intuition and HAES can help you to challenge your beliefs about bodies.
How do you heal from diet culture’s impacts?
Healing from diet culture takes a multi-system approach because diet culture is the water that you swim in. It can be lonely to start your healing journey, so finding a community of people and/or a buddy so that you feel less alone can be helpful. There are many books, podcasts, blogs that we provide at Bravespace Nutrition that discuss diet culture that may help support you. Consider also meeting with a anti-diet culture dietitian to unlearn diet culture and create peace with food and your body.
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Want help healing from diet culture and disordered eating in Seattle, WA?
It’s hard to escape the impacts and harms of diet culture and know where to begin to heal your relationship to food and your body. At Bravespace Nutrition, our Health At Every Size, eating disorder Dietitians want to help you do just this. We specialize in eating disorders, disordered eating, intuitive eating and body image concerns. Reach out to us to schedule a discovery call today!