The Truth about Diet Culture: Why it’s Harmful to Your Body and Mind
“There’s this beautiful thing that happens when you give up diet culture: You finally have the space to learn about yourself.”
You may hear people saying the term “diet culture” here and there nowadays. But you still wonder: aren’t diets good for you - to lose weight, get toned, and back in shape?
Why do people refer to diet culture as something unhealthy?
In this article, I’ve gathered all the information you need about diet culture and its effects on society and the health world.
What is Diet Culture?
Diet culture is the belief the way you look is more important than your general well-being.
In the modern world, so many diets get popular.
People try them with the single idea to get thinner, smaller, and look like they’ve come out of a magazine cover.
While there’s nothing wrong with living a healthy life, working out regularly, and trying to get in shape, there’s something wrong with caring only about calories and trying to fit into the smallest clothing size possible.
Unfortunately, diet culture does not encourage a healthy life. It supports an appearance that is hard to maintain and is a highlight from a magazine or social media.
There are constant trends around diet culture. Every week some 'gurus' demonize certain foods or entire food groups.
Also, there are inevitable trends (foods and drinks) that claim to fix all your problems. Lemon water, I am looking at you.
Last week I read a tweet that air supports fat gain...
There are many absurd claims. However, you may still fall for them.
It’s not your fault. It’s completely normal. You don’t have to be an expert in every area.
Before you follow a diet or health advice online, research whether it’s a fact or the next trend.
Make sure you don’t follow trends.
How to Recognize Diet Culture
While you may think that diet culture doesn’t affect you, nobody is safe. Here are the most common traits you can recognize diet culture by:
Labeling foods as good or bad.
If someone demonizes a food, telling you it’s "bad" for you, run away.
Every food has a place in a well-balanced diet.
Social media influencers usually demonize gluten or dairy.
Well, as long as you’re not allergic or sensitive to gluten or dairy, there’s no logical reason to avoid them if you enjoy them. This rule goes for any other food or food group.
Labeling people as good or bad based on their food choices.
Eating salads all day, every day, won’t make you a better person. It can make you more anxious, cranky, and have less energy.
There’s nothing good about the lack of variety in your diet.
Your food choices don’t define you as a person.
Everyone who says otherwise is a diet culture supporter.
Food is something you earn.
You shouldn’t feel like you have to run 30 minutes on the treadmill to earn to eat a donut. Donuts or any other food is no treat.
How much you eat should not depend on how hard you’ve worked for it.
Making you look at food as a number of calories.
When you look at a slice of pizza, that’s what you should see - pizza! Not 500 calories.
Food is not a number. It’s a way to fuel your body and mind, so you can make the most out of your day while feeling at your best.
Why is Diet Culture Harmful?
There’s nothing wrong with people expressing their opinions and choices on social media. It is one of its main ideas.
However, giving advice and swearing by it just to make an extra buck while affecting other people’s health is harmful.
After spending an hour scrolling through TikTok, seeing thin girls consuming 1200 calories per day and promoting it as healthy can change your perception of reality.
Diet culture can play with your mind and make you feel unworthy.
Remember that results take time and there’s no trick that can speed up the process.
Diet culture:
Gives false perception about what you consider to be normal
If you spend all day looking at slim girls eating salads, you consider it normal.
There’s nothing wrong with this behavior, as long as you want to consume salad… All day.
But, if you believe this to be a healthy approach to food, that’s not okay.
Understand that your body is unique and has specific needs and reactions to different foods.
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the nutrition approach.
Demonizes certain foods
Repeat after me: every food has a place in a well-balanced diet.
Is it okay to eat fast food every day? Probably not.
Is it alright to eat fast food now and then? Yes, it is.
The spice of happy life and a healthy diet comes from variety.
Believe it or not, eating salads all day may not be the healthiest decision for your body.
Makes food look like something you have to earn
Your body burns calories (energy) just to keep your basic functions (like sleeping).
Even if you don’t do anything all day, you’d still be burning calories. Therefore, even on the laziest days, you still deserve food.
Don’t let anyone tell you something else.
Makes a person think only of the size of their body, not their overall health or worth.
Your worth is not measured in inches, pounds, or kilos.
Your body weight and size do not define you as a person. It certainly doesn’t define whether you’re healthy or not. Remember that.
Leads to food binges
When you restrict yourself from having food X, you immediately start craving it.
You do your best to resist the temptation, but eventually, you surrender.
You may even end up overeating because you know this food is off the table - you may not be able to have it again soon.
After that, you feel weak and terrible about yourself.
Then you go back to restriction, and everything repeats.
Leads to low self-esteem and negative talk
When you base your worth on food choices or trying to resist a craving, you describe yourself as a weak person and start practicing negative self-talk.
It can shift and harm your perception of yourself and your self-esteem.
Harms the relationship with food
Labeling foods, binging and feeling like you should deserve your food harms your overall perception and relationship with food.
It can lead to food disorders and extra stress.
Harms social interactions
When somebody invites you to a social gathering, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
If it’s about whether the food is suitable for your diet, then that diet is too restrictive and not applicable to your day-to-day life.
Makes you spin your life around food.
Your life should not be all about food.
You should not spend the day subtracting calories from a total number after every bite.
You should not think all the time about food - is it finally 10 am so you can have your apple and so on. Should you bring your own snacks (like carrots) to the movies because you don’t want to eat popcorn?
Stop spinning your life around food. There’s much more to it.
Nowadays, it’s normal to fall into the rabbit hole of diet culture. It’s pretty hard to avoid it entirely. It is nothing to be ashamed of.
However, know that at any moment, you’re in charge. You can change your behavior and choices. If you find it hard, you can always speak to a dietitian, specialist, nutritionist, or nutrition coach.
“Thinness may hold currency in diet culture, but your weight does not define your worth.”
Diet Culture’s Damages
Diet culture can result in:
Poor self-image
Your food choices should not affect the way you perceive yourself.
Low self-esteem
Your look and food choices do not define you as a person.
Caring only about the way a person looks
There’s much more to people than their outer look.
Thinking that the thinner and smaller a person is the happier they are.
Your body size does not define how happy you are.
All my life, I’ve just wanted to be thin - as thin as possible. Once I realized that this is not what gives me happiness, my mindset shifted.
You don’t have to wait for x, y, or z to happen to be happy.
This realization helped me be more grateful, appreciative, and present.
I am currently the heaviest I’ve ever been (weight-wise). I’ve never felt or looked better.
Your weight does not define your worth or beauty. But it can play with your mind in an unhealthy way.
Negative self-talk
Your thoughts and the things you say to yourself go a long way. You may think that it’s not a big deal, but it is.
The way you talk to yourself can be the thing you need to shift your perceptions around food.
Practice being kind to yourself.
Whenever you catch yourself thinking you’re not good enough, imagine you’re talking to your best friend.
What would you tell her if she was in the same situation? Will you be so harsh and tough on her?
Write down what you’d say to her and then read it to yourself.
All-or-nothing mentality
Life’s not either black or white. It has nuances.
You’re not either doing only good or bad food choices.
When you eat pizza, you should not consider yourself an unhealthy eater.
I guarantee you: a healthy person eats salads and pizza, oats and pancakes, Buddha bowls, and burritos.
The key is in balance.
Food binges.
Food binges usually occur whenever you think that some foods are off-limits. Then you start craving them.
You can control yourself for a while but eventually, you give up.
You eat beyond feeling full, resulting in shame, guilt, and more negative talk.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Disordered eating and orthorexia
Unfortunately, eating disorders are common in the modern world.
Eating disorders mess not only with your physical but mental health too.
Orthorexia is a type of eating disorder. It occurs when a person is obsessed with making only healthy nutrition choices.
Making healthy nutrition choices is good. However, obsessing about them in a way that damages your overall well-being is not.
Diet culture can damage your health (both physical and mental) pretty badly.
Educate yourself on good nutrition and overall well-being to avoid diet culture.
It can be easier if you work with a nutrition coach. They will help you maintain a healthy perception of food.
How Diet Culture Affects People
When in the initial stages, diet culture might not affect your life entirely. However, the deeper you go into the rabbit hole, you might find your life spinning only around food.
Here are a few of the aspects of your life that diet culture affects:
It affects your social life.
You choose whether to participate in a social event based on food availability.
You avoid going out because it is harder to resist food or because you can’t control yourself around certain foods.
It affects the way you perceive food.
Food comes with labels - it's either good or bad.
The more bad food you consume the more bad person you become.
You don’t perceive food as chicken, apples, etc., but as a number of calories - the lower the calories, the better the food.
Numerous diet culture rules makes you shift your perception of different foods
It affects the way you talk to yourself.
You start the negative talk when you eat bad foods and don’t get thinner.
You tend to see how good other people are doing and perceive yourself as weak.
It affects the way you see yourself.
You judge yourself based on food choices. Your whole world revolves around food.
Social Media Effects on Diet Culture
Social media has been beneficial in many ways to society. It brings people closer together, helps you meet new friends, and creates online communities with the same interests, etc.
However, everyone can have a social account and share their opinion.
Here are some of the ways social media makes the spread of diet culture easier:
Most social media influencers and coaches recommend eating 1200 calories (not enough), working out all the time, or recommending workouts that get no results (crazy abs exercises).
They also recommend certain pills or supplements for fast fat loss that are not reliable.
While 1200 calories may be enough for a toddler, they are not for a full-grown adult.
Working out all the time can result in poor performance, constantly feeling fatigued, and slowing down results due to the lack of rest.
Having visible abs will take a much different approach than doing 100 sit-ups per day.
There are no magical pills, detox teas, or overnight solutions for weight loss. It takes a customized strategy, patience, and consistency.
The aesthetic shown on social media does not correspond to reality.
After all, social media is a nice picture taken from a good angle in good lighting.
Everything changes when you look at the same photo from a different angle.
Just like a magazine cover, social media is a highlight. It does not show the reality.
Stop taking everything you see on social media for the absolute truth.
However, there are influencers and coaches on social media that keep it real. They share their journey on how to overcome the toxic diet culture.
Besides the fact that some influencers are in the health and fitness online industry to make a quick buck, others understand the whole picture and don’t fool around.
They usually share Instagram versus Reality posts to show that social media is simply a photo taken from a perfect angle.
You’re in charge of your social media - you choose who to follow and surround yourself with.
If seeing certain people on social media does not make you feel good, that’s what the unfollow button is for. Use it.
How to Stay Away from Diet Culture When You Want to Lose Weight or Change Your Body in Some Way
Diet culture is all around you. If you google “how to lose weight” right now, numerous ads and quick fixes will appear on your search.
That’s why when you want to lose weight or change your body, you should be pretty careful.
Here are some guidelines that will be useful:
Everything that promises quick results is non-realistic and probably is part of diet culture. There’s no magic pill for losing weight.
There’s a difference between losing weight and losing fat.
If somebody claimed to lose a lot of weight after going on the keto diet, they did not lose fat. They lost water.
It’s no coincidence carboHYDRATES are called this way.
Your body holds more water when consuming carbs. The water flushes when you stop eating them.
You don’t lose fat even if the scale moves down. You lose water.
*Disclaimer: Even though the keto diet (properly done) is not a part of diet culture, I mention it because many people use it as a weight-loss tool. The keto diet is a good choice if you don’t enjoy eating carbs or don’t feel okay after eating them.
If a diet or meal plan forbids you from eating certain foods, better stay away from that program.
Any food has a part in a well-balanced diet.
Obsessing or spinning your whole life around food is not healthy.
Find a better approach that fits your lifestyle without flipping your life upside down.
Don’t let yourself think you’re weak or bad based on your food choices.
The size of your body does not define your worth or the level of happiness in your life.
Socializing is a normal desire and a need people have.
You don’t have to stop seeing friends and family because of food.
You determine who to follow and what to see on social media.
Make it a positive experience that improves your life, not playing with your mind.
Food was, is, and always will be a part of your life.
Make it the part that improves your overall quality of life.
Aim to create balance in every aspect of your life, including nutrition and well-being.
Final thoughts
When it comes to body change, it’s hard and almost impossible to escape diet culture.
It’s okay if you’ve fallen into the rabbit hole. I am also guilty of that one.
However, you should always put your well-being and health first.
Diet culture is harmful to not only your physical but mental health too.
The size of your body, the number on the scale, and the size of the clothes you wear do not define you as a person.
Being size two won’t make you happier.
You will be even more obsessed with how little to eat to maintain it while constantly feeling tired and anxious.
Define the metrics that determine your happiness and well-being.
Ask yourself how your life would change if you had x, y, or z. What would be different?
Living a healthy life comes down to following a few simple fundamentals. Don’t overcomplicate it with restrictive and time-consuming rules.
If you feel lost in the nutrition world and need guidance to live your healthiest and happiest life, check out my 1:1 coaching. I can’t wait to help you build a healthy lifestyle you can stick to every day.
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I hope this article motivated you to keep on going with your wellness journey with more confidence.
Until next time.
- Mariya
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