What is diet culture?
This page is dedicated to diet culture and its deleterious effects on our physical and mental state. As a start, for those who have never heard of this concept, let's define "diet culture".
Diet culture is a system of thought in which food is categorized into "good" or "bad", where eating whatever you crave or eating "normally", by means intuitive eating, is a severe sin.
Many social media celebrities encourage this way of eating. In fact, if you've ever went on a diet, you've probably tried this and blamed yourself for failing it. But don't blame no more, for this lifestyle or diet is not meant to work. I will soon post an article about reasons why not to diet.
Let's go in depth about this topic, shall we? The diet culture is full of people judging bodies as "healthy" based on their degree of fatness. The thinner you are, the healthier you are. This is very wrong as one's body shape isn't solely based on what they eat and how much they eat (calories in - calories out) but more so based on one's metabolism and body type mostly determined by
genetics. We all have that one thin friend who is always eating, and not particularly healthy food; this is because of his/her fast metabolism. And that person who keeps complaining about not losing weight yet is eating healthy and controling their portions; they could potentially have a slow metabolism. Therefore, one can not judge healthiness of someone by their body's degree of fatness. This is the main reason why diet culture is absolutely non-sense and bad.
Let's not mention how the feeling of guilt is greatly associated with food in the diet culture. How could this help one get healthy or lose weight? It makes sense though, doesn't it? To tell yourself that sugar and carbs such as bread, pasta, rice, is fattening, will make you avoid these foods, right? The thing is, it won't. Avoiding foods you love is not that easy, it'll probably take months before you really do completely abstain from eating them and what's so good about feeling guilty everytime you can't resist your urge to eat those foods you naturally love? And let's say it won't be hard to stop eating these foods, in both cases, you will have a bad approach to these foods, for they are bad for you, according to some person. If you really do want to have a healthy lifestyle, refer to my page about this where I will explain what healthy actually is. To give you a brief guidance, healthy means balanced, do you see the words "abstain" or "guilt" in balance?
QUICK DISCLAIMER: Do not confound diet culture and vegetrianism/veganism, one is vegan for ethical reasons. I am mentioning this because this is the lifestyle I follow and encourage on my blog and would therefore like to add that vegans do not consider non-vegan foods as "food" but instead as "animals" when referring to meat/fish/... or as "by-animal products" such as milk/eggs/... Please make this distinction when talking about abstaining from specific food groups.
Following the diet culture will, for sure, totally mess up your mental state (and potentially your physical state) for the rest of your life. I believe that one can not completely heal from that way of thinking, it will always be engrained somewhere in one's brain and could be triggered. Diet culture indirectly encourages eating disorders, it's called "disorder" for a reason, isn't it?
I don't want to make this post too factual and boring, so I'll set it straight. If you choose to follow diet culture guidelines, then you're choosing a lifestyle where you feel absolute shit about yourself when you take that extra cookie, where you feel like breaking down when you gain an extra pound over the holidays, where you have a crisis if you skip a workout, where you don't eat food but rather calories and macros, where you have fear when confronted with full-fat foods, honestly the list goes on. Our culture couldn't care less about our mental state, it only focuses on your body's state but believe it or not, mentality is WAY more important than one's physical state.
Lastly, diet culture twists the definition of the word "health", creating social norms around one's appearance and rate of attractiveness. It's turning us into clueless, ignorant, absolutely SICK beings with no control over ourselves. Ask yourself this -- do you really want to be a follower or a leader? Be a leader, an influencor, share positivity, help make a change in our destructive society and teach young people what healthy really is. Just don't be a follower, it ain't nice to let others decide your faith. Supposedly, our society nowadays has a huge obsession over health and exercise, and reinforces the importance of those in social medias...well, let me say, society has a damn funny way of showing its concern.
