3 Ways to Move Away From Diet Culture According to An Eating Disorder Therapist in Pennsylvania
Diet culture is everywhere.
When you start learning about diet culture, how far it reaches and permeates your everyday life, you’ll also start to recognize sneaky ways that it shows up in everyday conversations or in everyday activities.
Here are some common examples of how diet culture could be showing up in your everyday:
Eating a candy bar in the car and telling your friend, “omg I’m being so bad”/
Moving through weekend activities planning to “get back on track” on Monday
Using the term “bad” to describe highly palatable foods
Looking through the snack aisle and seeing different foods with “light” “clean” “diet” or “skinny” in their names
Heading to the doctor to get checked out for a sinus infection and being told that weight loss should be a priority for your health
Scrolling TikTok or IG and watching videos with the hashtag #bodygoals
All of these comments are rooted in the idea that you should be controlling your body through the foods you eat and how you move your body. And, that your body is best and healthiest if it is thin.
Diet culture is a term used to describe our culture that equates thinness to health, attractiveness, worthiness and happiness.
Diet culture extends through most areas of our society.
From healthcare, what we’re taught in health class and physical education, to the media, advertising, and content that we consume on the internet, diet culture is insidious. So much so that it can be hard to recognize it when it’s right in front of you.
If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, binge eating or body image, or if you’re tired of dieting and are doing your best to learn intuitive eating, understanding diet culture is often an integral part of engaging in recovery, and shifting the way that you care for your mind and your body.
Remember, you weren’t born into the world hating your body.
At some point a shift happens. That shift can most times be pointed toward lessons, family norms and beliefs about bodies and ways of trying to find belonging that are rooted in diet culture.
It’s important to remember that body diversity is very real, and that even if we all ate and moved our bodies in the same exact ways, we would still have vastly different bodies.
Here are some ways to spot diet culture:
Its intentions are to promote intentional weight loss
It moralizes (good vs bad)
It elicits shame about being or becoming fat
It encourages counting, tracking, or weighing
It celebrates thinness
It increases rigidity around what you’re including or excluding from your diet
So, how can you start to move away from diet culture?
Call it out when you see it.
In the grocery store, at the doctor’s office, on TikTok, and on Netflix. Keep an ongoing game of I spy diet culture 👀 going.
Get curious about your internal dialogue. Does it sound similar to diet culture’s messages?
There’s no shame in it. Acknowledge and externalize the beliefs. Something like “Hey, that sounds a lot like diet culture. What can I do to respect and care for my body in this moment?”
Start challenging self-beliefs and behaviors that are rooted in diet culture’s intentions.
Take inventory of where your values are in your life. How can you live in alignment with them? How can you begin prioritizing connection to your body, just as it is, and honoring its needs and hungers?
Moving away from diet culture is hard work.
We’re literally swimming in it each and every day.
But the more you can externalize its messages and come home to your body, your values, your beliefs about worthiness and wholeness, the more you can build resilience to it.
🧡,
We provide online therapy in Pennsylvania and in person therapy in Horsham, PA
Reclaim Therapy is a specialized therapy group that provides trauma treatment in Pennsylvania, eating disorder treatment, and body image counseling. We believe that people are deserving of Reclaiming their lives from trauma, diet culture, and their eating disorder. We provide one on one counseling and group support for people who live in Pennsylvania and are struggling with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, orthorexia, and compulsive exercise. We also specialize in treating PTSD and CPTSD (complex trauma). Click the button below to set up an appointment with a caring therapist today!