Why It’s Time to Give Up Dieting and Diet Talk For Good
Blog Post By Christie Dondero Bettwy
Diet culture is everywhere. It is exhausting to hear the false messages that tell us we need to make our bodies smaller and avoid countless foods to be “healthy”. I went on my first diet at the age of 10, and that distorted my thinking and relationship with food for years to come and eventually spiraled into an eating disorder.
Now that I am 15 years into recovery from an eating disorder, I am no longer phased by the harmful comments I constantly hear about food and bodies, yet I desperately want to shift the message.
So what is diet culture? In a nutshell, it is the belief that we should all try to be in smaller bodies at any cost, often through the restriction of certain foods.
In addition to this being a blatant lie, we also know that diets don’t work, and depriving ourselves of foods we enjoy often leads to cycles of restriction and binge eating. We call this disordered eating.
Diet culture and diet talk is so common that it can often be challenging to spot, but once you turn your radar on you will start to see it everywhere.
It can be as sneaky as, “You look great, have you lost weight!”
Or as (seemingly) obvious as, “You shouldn’t eat that, that food is bad.”
Or something as commonplace (yet entirely untrue) as, “I’ll have to go run later to work off this meal!”
Diet talk is pervasive, it’s exhausting, and it is incredibly harmful to those who struggle with food and their body image. Really, it harms all of us. Especially those in larger bodies. In honor of International No Diet Day, here are three reasons why here at Rock Recovery we think it’s time to ditch diet culture and diet talk for good (and to embrace Health at Every Size instead!)
All bodies are good bodies
Say it with me, all bodies are good bodies. Period. Our bodies will not be better once they take up less space or are in some other form. They are good as they are. While all bodies come with their own unique sets of challenges and abilities, they are no more or less worthy based on their ability, size or shape. We were all created uniquely and are allowed to take up space without needing to try to conform to harmful and unrealistic standards. One of diet culture’s greatest lies is that our lives will be better if we would just become smaller. Speaking from personal experience, when I was at my smallest, my health and wellbeing was at an all-time low. I got the most compliments for my appearance during this time, but I was absolutely miserable and going to incredibly unhealthy lengths to shrink my body. It took working with a trained eating disorder therapist for me to realize that the messages I had been receiving about health were absolutely false and fueled my diet culture.
Our appearance is the least interesting thing about us
When I think back to my own struggle with disordered eating, food and exercise took up so much of my thought life it left room for little else. I remember attending a support group for people with eating disorders, and the facilitator had us make a pie chart of where our thought energy went throughout the day. I was horrified to see a physical depiction showing that the vast majority of my resources were being spent on thinking about food, exercise and my body. It was totally out of alignment with what I would have said I valued investing in and the things that make me who I am, such as relationships, hobbies and things that brought me joy. As my relationship with food and my body started to heal, I was able to refocus that energy elsewhere and invest in things that make me uniquely me. I started to rethink how I spent my energy and who I spent the majority of my time with on a daily basis. I became more international with reaching out to and spending more time with people who felt life-giving, got involved in volunteering and started to travel more.
Food is a gift to be enjoyed, and we can trust our bodies
Diet culture has taught us to prize thinness over all else, even our own wellbeing and health. During my struggle with disordered eating, I was so afraid of being hungry or feeling out of control with my eating or exercise that I developed an intense mistrust of my body’s needs and cues. Fighting against my body to make it smaller was exhausting, and actually quite horrible for my health. During recovery when I was told there was a way to trust my body and the cues it gave me, I was shocked. It all seemed too easy (though at first it was VERY difficult to relearn these natural cues I had fought for over a decade). A huge piece in learning to trust my body’s cues was developing the belief that food was a gift to be enjoyed, not an enemy to fear. Breaking bread with family and friends is now one of my favorite ways to spend my time. I love how connective it feels, and I can now be fully present at the table thanks to my own healing and hard work I put into recovery.
No matter where you are in your journey to healing your relationship with food and body image, I encourage you to take small steps every day to pursue greater freedom from the lies of diet culture and to get back into alignment with who you were uniquely created to be. I believe there is a fuller, freer life available for you outside of dieting and disordered eating. I’ve personally experienced it and have seen countless Rock Recovery clients discover freedom is possible for themselves too. Are you ready to experience it too?
Ready to get connected to individual counseling or a therapy or support group? Check out our eating disorder therapy services and virtual faith-based support groups here. If you want to better understand your relationship with food, exercise and self-image and to gauge whether it might be time to get support, click here to download our disordered eating quiz.