Exposing Diet and Wellness Culture

Dieting - changing eating and exercise habits in an effort to loose weight, and seemingly improve health.

In reality, dieting is a form of disordered eating and in many cases an eating disorder. Dieting will lead to rebound over-eating, an obsession with food, and weight gain. In fact, 2/3 of people who diet in an attempt to loose weight end up gaining more than they lost. And although diets do not work, the diet and wellness culture industry is now worth over $70 billion. With this being said, diet culture is a systematic and cultural problem, not an individual one. Concerns about eating, exercising, weight, and body shape are a direct result of diet culture.

Trying to change the size and shape of your body, which is what diet culture tells you to do, will lead a person to worse physical and mental health outcomes versus body acceptance. Internalized weight stigma has been shown to increase a persons risk for all diseases that are typically blamed on weight itself. Diet culture makes everyone feel that they are not enough, and that your worth is based entirely on your appearance and ‘willpower’ to live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle. Although, health has literally NOTHING to do with a persons weight, appearance, or daily vegetable consumption.

Diet culture is a system of beliefs that:

1. Worships thinness and equates your size with your health and morality

2. Promotes weight loss as a means to attain a higher social status

3. Demonizes certain types of food and ways of eating while elevating others.

Stop buying into the toxicity of diet culture. Find what makes you happy, learn to accept your body, and eat whatever the fuck makes you feel good. Please stop judging yourself, stop judging your food choices, and even your choice of movement. It’s never too late to take back the life that was stolen from you by the diet culture industry.