Diet culture is one of my least favorite things in the world. It perpetuates the lie that if we eat and move in certain ways, we can achieve a “good” body. Of course, the ways we’re told to achieve this are infinite. Diet culture says:
“Keto will make your fat melt off and all your dreams come true and you will be a more valuable person.”
“WW isn’t a diet now we’re calling it a ‘lifestyle’ and all you have to do is obsess over everything you put in your mouth and count the points and you will be a good girl. You’ll never lose all the weight you want to and therefore will be a permanent customer and we will enjoy profiting off your misery all the days of your life.”
“Sugar is evil and if you stop eating it all your problems will be solved and you will minimize all risk of ever developing a chronic disease and you’ll live forever.”
“Paleo is the way our ancestors ate (but not really but that’s what we’re going to tell you)… don’t you want to be a caveman?”
And so on and so forth. Obviously these are a bit exaggerated, but really, this is the overarching message the diet industry sends:
“Your body is not good enough as it is right now. You need to change your body. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it. You will not be a worthy human unless you at least try to change your body. Also please be sure to post about it and tell everyone you know so that we can make money off of their insecurities, too.”
It’s pervasive and persuasive. I completely understand the allure. Even though I’ve always had thin privilege and grew up in what society deems an ‘acceptable’ body, I fell victim to the diet industry, too, and eventually that led to developing an eating disorder.
Did you know that dieting is the number one predictor of developing an eating disorder? And that eating disorders have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental illness? Neither did I.
Thankfully, I recovered from my eating disorder. But the hardest part was recovering in the midst of diet culture. It’s still hard today sometimes because it is literally everywhere. There’s no escape. Everywhere you go, there is a reminder of what your body “should” look like, and someone selling something (falsely) promising to “help” you get there. On top of that, there’s nothing people love to talk about more than what they’re eating, or, more importantly, what they’re not eating. Your friends talk about it, your family talks about it, your coworkers talk about it, and you hear it on every TV show, movie and commercial, and from every Instagram “influencer” ever. Sigh… The overload of information is contradictory, wildly inaccurate, misleading, harmful, and ultimately confusing, leading people to wonder what is even “safe” to eat these days.
The diet industry is a genius business model — they sell the customer something that doesn’t work (long-term), the customer blames themselves for failing even though it is secretly the product that failed because it doesn’t actually achieve what it claims to, and then the customer buys into another diet/product. And repeat, forever, because there are that many diets to try. But here’s the deal: Diet’s don’t work.
I know that is probably uncomfortable to hear, and maybe you disagree because you or your aunt or your second-cousin-twice-removed are doing keto and have lost weight. But at what cost? Generally, both mental and physical health suffer. Also, it’s both unbelievable and unethical that weight loss is even still recommended as something to do for health since we currently have zero (yes, ZERO) research showing how to lose weight and keep it off long term, and have many studies showing the long list of adverse health effects from chronic dieting.
I know it seems like anyone can and does lose weight. We’ve all seen the (harmful) before & afters, praising one body over another. But this is generally short term. For the vast majority of people (>95%), any weight lost is gained back within 2–5 years, often times gaining more than was lost. Yet, everyone holds out hope that they’re in the <5% who may just lose the weight and keep it off. But often times, those who keep the weight off do so because they fall into disordered patterns of eating and exercise, sometimes even slipping into a full blown eating disorder without realizing it. Is it really worth it?
No.
But here’s the deal. The reason we have a hard time keeping weight off permanently is because our bodies are doing their jobs. When we restrict our intake in any way, the body picks up on it because our bodies are masterpieces and extremely smart, and they sense there’s a famine. Our bodies cannot differentiate between an actual famine and intentional restriction. They just know that something is wrong, so they do what they need to in order to keep us alive. They slow down metabolism in order to more efficiently utilize the decreased energy coming in, they increase ghrelin (our hunger signaling hormone) to make us hungrier, and make energy-dense food more appetizing so we eat them and live another day. These are all perfectly normal mechanisms, and they are literally your body working its hardest to keep you alive. Thank God! But the way we perceive this in our culture is that we “lack will power” and are “addicted” to food/sugar/etc., and then restrict more. The cycle continues, as does the dissatisfaction with our bodies.
It breaks my heart. Our current state of the world sees bodies first and people second. We are obsessed with bodies, and make so many assumptions simply based on what we can see. We make assumptions about health, lifestyle, food intake, exercise, morality, character, and so much more, just because of the body a person presents with. I don’t have time to unpack all of those right now, or this post will turn into a book, but I just want to say that these are all false assumptions. Regardless of what we’ve learned from culture, family, friends, and even the healthcare community, we cannot tell anything about a person or their health by looking at them. And before anyone says, “but what about health?,” no, you can’t tell anything about someone’s health simply by observing their body. BMI is useless and weight does not equal health, but again, that’s a post for another time.
Today, I’m just asking that we try something new. Try to stop the assumptions we make when we meet someone new. Try to stop judging and characterizing others based on appearances. Try to stop determining health based on size. These are all stigmatizing, harmful and divisive. I propose that, instead, we try to listen better, love better, see beyond what meets the eye, get to know a person’s heart, ask about their passions.
Find anything else to talk about besides food/exercise/bodies.
It’s not easy, I know. There’s a strong sense of community that comes with dieting. But there is stronger community to be found outside of diet culture. Ask questions until you find common interests. Ask others what they’re most passionate about in the world and then talk about it! Or ask about what they like to do in their free time. Maybe you both love Netflix! Who doesn’t? Share your favorite shows and discuss them. Or maybe you find out you both love Jesus! Awesome — talk about your church, what you’ve been learning lately, or something you might need prayer for.
All this to say, we all have so much more to offer the world than our bodies. I know most of us know this on some level, but maybe you can start to believe it a little more today. And if you struggle accepting your own body the way it is, you’re not alone. It’s hard living in a world that tells us there is only one acceptable way to look and one size to be. But I’m here to encourage you, you are so much more than a body. We are all more than bodies. You are not more valuable if you take up less space, or less valuable if you take up more space. You were made for a purpose. God created you, crafted you, fearfully and wonderfully, and He doesn’t make any mistakes.
You are loved, valued, and cherished, exactly as you are, because of who you are and Whose you are.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite verses:
“The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (Samuel 16:7b)
God knows you. He knows your heart. He loves you. And I don’t say this to minimize your lived experience in any way, but to serve as a reminder: it truly does not matter what others think of you. That doesn’t mean words can’t hurt or that stigma doesn’t harm. They can and it does. But please still remember, you are seen and loved, exactly as you are, by the only One whose opinion truly matters.
