It’s always important to prioritize living a healthy lifestyle, and making choices that are good for your overall health and wellbeing. We all want to do our best to eat right and feel good. However, dieting isn't, and never will be, equivalent to living a healthy lifestyle. In fact, dieting is just about the worst thing you can do for your health. The extreme calorie restriction and nutrient deprivation that we put our bodies through when we go on a diet puts the body into a state of stress, which actually sets us up to gain weight rather than lose it. The stress caused by dieting is also bad for the immune system and for maintaining stable moods. In our culture today, diets go in and out of fashion the same way clothes and hairstyles do. It seems that there is always a new trendy diet to try. This is diet culture. Diet culture has completely warped our sense of what it really means to live a healthy lifestyle, by prioritizing weight and shape over health and wellness. Diet culture convinces us that we need to resort to drastic actions, such as cutting out entire food groups, or adhering to rigid ways of eating, in order to be healthy. Diet culture promotes fad diets as legitimate options for achieving optimal health and nutrition. Diet culture teaches us to fear food, and to distrust our bodies.
It is easy to spot the influence of diet culture around us when we know what to look for. Any person, brand, or company attaching any kind of moral virtue to food is promoting diet culture. When we look at food through the lens of diet culture, we are only able to see “good” and “bad” foods, and as a result, start to see ourselves as “good” or “bad” for eating them. This is where the concept of “cheating” comes from. You can “cheat” on a diet, and the outcome is feelings of guilt, shame and worthlessness. However, when you are living a life of true health that is balanced and focused on overall wellness, foods no longer have a moral virtue attached. There is only food, and how your body responds to the food you put into it. You are not a failure or a “cheater” for eating cake, cake is not “bad”. You are simply a human being, listening to and honoring your body, and choosing to nourish your soul as well as your body. It is about time we reject the influence of diet culture, and stop attaching morals to the food we eat. Food just simply doesn’t have that much power!
Diet culture can be extremely toxic, but you can choose to consciously reject diets and diet culture, and live a healthy and balanced life. The mixed messages coming from diet culture can make it very difficult to make decisions about food and nutrition, so it’s always advisable to consult a qualified Registered Dietitian Nutritionist about implementing good eating habits. Registered Dietitian Nutritionists use evidence based nutrition principles, and are trained to give expert health advice.